All Men Are Afraid of Dying
by QueenOfTheDreamers87
Summary: "When you told me you loved me, I wasn't… this. I wasn't the man who stands before you now. Everything's changed since that night." "Changed for the better," Belle assured him." Belle is adjusting to life in the rejuvenated castle. Her prince is remembering what it means to be human. They'll both need help. Novel-length, based on the 2017 film. Repost.
1. Chapter 1

"What are you reading?"

Belle glanced up from the plush chair into which she'd settled. Adam - she kept having to remind herself of that name - hovered nervously nearby. Belle studied his face, smiling a little at the scruff along his jaw.

"I'm reading _Julie, or the New Heloise_," Belle informed Adam. She held up the little green book, its binding in brand-new condition. Adam frowned, his brows furrowing in the same way they'd done when he'd been the Beast.

"I've never heard of that one," he said, and Belle laughed quietly.

"I'm not surprised," she said. "This is a first edition. It was immensely popular straight away, but it would have been put into your library just before… you know, before the curse was placed. And, with all respect, it doesn't seem like the sort of book you would have enjoyed back then."

"Why not?" Adam demanded, folding his arms over his crisp brown coat. His vibrant blue eyes flashed a little, and Belle couldn't help but laugh. She rose from the chair and shut the book, pushing it against Adam's chest. She still wasn't used to his shorter height or his narrower shoulders. She threaded her fingers through his with her free hand, examining the feel of his skin as she did.

"It's a novel of passion by Rousseau," Belle informed Adam. She brushed her thumb over his and added, "but it's also a political book, so much so that it was banned in many places. Rousseau stresses the ethics of authenticity, instead of conforming to expectations."

Adam smirked. "Why am I not surprised you like it?"

"I didn't say I _liked_ it," Belle teased. She shook her head, unable to pretend. "All right. Fine. I do like it, but I'm hardly alone. When this book was released, women and men alike wrote endless letters to Rousseau about how the book made them sob, about how they were overcome by it."

Adam scowled and pulled the book from his chest. "How good can it be?" he demanded. He opened the book to a random page and read aloud, "_He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed._ Hmm." He put the book back into Belle's hands and stared at her for a moment before saying, "I'll have to give it a read sometime."

"Well, not until I'm done with it," Belle said, setting the book on the chair behind her. The summer air was pleasant as it drifted in through the flung-open windows, and as Belle looked around the parlor, she realized the castle had morphed almost as much as its inhabitants.

"Are you very sure you don't want to go home?" Adam asked, and Belle sighed as she met his azure eyes.

"You're letting my father visit whenever he wants," she reminded him, "and those people - the villagers - are the ones who marched here with torches in their hands, hellbent on killing you. Why would I want to go back to them?"

Her prince quirked up half his mouth, looking almost shy as he reminded her, "When you told me you loved me, I wasn't… this. I wasn't the man who stands before you now. Everything's changed since that night."

"Changed for the better," Belle assured him. She squeezed his hand a little and admitted, "There was something very alluring, to be certain, about the very large, very strong body you inhabited when I first met you." She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as Adam looked away and rolled his blue eyes. She put her free hand to his coat, feeling his very human chest beneath it, and she insisted in a quiet voice, "There are things I wouldn't have done with you then. It would have felt wrong. It doesn't feel wrong now, though."

"_Things_," he repeated, shutting his eyes for a moment. He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing visibly in a way that Belle never would have noticed when he'd been the Beast. He finally opened his eyes and turned to her, shaking his head. "I'm still not used to being human again. It will take time for me to…"

He licked his lip then, releasing Belle's hand and taking a small step back. It had been two weeks now since the curse had been lifted, a week since they'd held their grand celebration. Now everything was quiet. The castle's servants were all settling back into the lives they'd been ripped from so long ago. Belle was adjusting to the new, more extravagant feel of the castle. And the Beast was gone, replaced by Prince Adam, who seemed to be finding the new way of things more difficult than anyone else.

Belle reached for his face, brushing her thumb along his jaw and whispering as gently as she could manage, "You've been chaste with me since the curse was lifted. Almost more chaste than before."

He flinched beneath her touch and shrugged. "I'm hardly comfortable walking, Belle; you expect me to… to _what_, exactly?"

"I just wish you would let me help you find yourself again," Belle murmured. She studied the line of the bridge of his nose; it had been far more flat when he'd been the Beast. She examined his golden hair, which had been a wild dark mane before. Then she looked at his eyes, which were precisely the same, and she informed him proudly, "I love you. The old way. The new way. All the ways. I love you."

"And I you," he promised her, covering her hand with his. He hesitated for a half second, and then he asked, "If I kissed you, would you slap me?"

"No," Belle laughed. "I would not slap you."

He tipped his head, something he'd done very often in his other form. "Would you have slapped him?"

"Gaston?" Belle's eyebrows went up and she shrugged. "Would've punched him, probably. Definitely wouldn't have given him permission. I'm giving you permission. In fact, I'm asking you. Please, will you kiss me?"

"Well, all right, then." Adam took Belle's face in his hands, his breath shaking through his nose as he lowered his face to hers. When their lips touched, Belle felt a little dizzy, and she grasped firmly onto the lapels of his coat. He was shorter, closer to her this way. But she didn't mind his humanity one bit when she tasted him, when his fingers tightened on her cheeks and his breath mingled with hers.

"Oh! _Excusez-moi_, Master… Mademoiselle. Hmm."

Belle tore her face from Adam's to see Lumière standing in the threshold of the parlor. The prince made an angry little sound that very closely resembled a growl, and Belle had to stifle her laughter.

"What is it, Lumière?" Adam demanded rather tersely. His hands fell from Belle's face, and Lumière said,

"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes. That's all! That's all I came to say, so now I will leave, and you can get back to… you know…"

"Lumière!" Belle exclaimed, feeling her cheeks go hot.

At dinner, she watched Adam eat, paying close attention to the way his fingers curled around his knife and fork.

"You are so engrossed by my hands that you've left your food entirely untouched," Adam finally noted, setting down his cutlery and staring across the table. Belle smiled a little and said,

"You're not the only one getting used to the new you."

Adam looked embarrassed, picking up his fork and stabbing it roughly into his beef. He sounded indignant as he mumbled, "Now you've got me very self-conscious, Belle."

"Well, I'm sorry," she said. "I'll just read my Rousseau while I eat, and that way nobody will be watching you."

She opened her copy of _Julie_ and ate her food absentmindedly as she read.

_Every day one loses something that was once held dear, and it cannot be replaced. And so we die a little at a time, until ultimately loving only oneself, one has ceased to feel and live before one has ceased to exist. But a sensible heart resists this premature death with all its strength; when the limbs begin to grow cold, it collects all its natural warmth around itself ; the more it loses, the more attached it becomes to what remains; and it holds to the last object, so to speak, by its ties to all the others._

Belle gulped as she finished those words, and she closed the book. It was a bit too near to reality just now, she thought.

"Something wrong?" asked the prince, and as she raised her eyes to him, she shook her head and lied,

"My eyes are tired."

He frowned, staying quiet as a few servants came in an cleared their plates. Belle thanked one, a young woman who had become a spoon for years. She got a warm smile in response. Once the dining-room was empty, Adam scratched at his hair a little and said,

"There's still quite a lot of adjusting to be done."

"Yes," Belle nodded. "There is."

He pursed his lips and stared thoughtfully at his hands. His voice was soft when he spoke, so quiet that Belle could only just hear what he'd said.

"Will you… help me find myself again?"

He was using her words from earlier. Belle felt her eyes burn with wholly unwanted tears. She tried to answer him, found herself unable, and watched as he turned his hand over and studied his palm.

"When I kissed you," he informed her carefully, "I felt more human. And, besides that, I liked it. Very much. I would like to do it again… and again and again."

Belle smiled to herself. "You can do it as much as you like."

When his icy blue eyes met hers then, they looked almost as dangerous as when he'd had horns and fangs. He tipped his head like he always did, and he instructed her, "Don't tempt me."

Belle rose from her chair, walking toward him with confident steps. Her practical, pale pink dress fluttered around her legs as she strode toward him. When she reached him, she cupped his jaw in her hand and turned his face up to hers. He was smaller in human form, but she only had to incline her head a little to kiss him, even with him seated. She kissed him far more deeply this time than he'd done in the parlour. She opened her mouth and he did the same, and she dared to venture her tongue between his lips. He groaned a little at the feel, his right arm snaking around her waist as his left hand balled into a fist on the table.

"Don't tempt me, Belle," he panted again once she'd pulled away. Belle smirked, whispering against his lips,

"Why don't you show me just what kind of a man you are?"

* * *

Adam flew up so quickly from his chair that Belle yelped in surprise. She was apparently even more surprised when he pushed her shoulders roughly, sending her crashing against the wall. His mouth was locked on hers, and so her cry of alarm came buzzing onto his lips and made him recoil. She rubbed at her shoulder, frowning as she dragged her wrist over her lips.

"I'm... I'm sorry," he found himself stammering like a fool, feeling badly for having hurt her. Sometimes this human form of his felt so weak and flimsy, and other times - like now - it seemed he'd retained some of his otherworldly strength. He hadn't meant to shove Belle so hard against the wall, but when she'd kissed him in his chair, something inside his chest had detonated. Now he braced himself against the wall with his arms and touched his lips to her forehead, murmuring again, "I'm sorry."

"No." Belle reached up and brushed her knuckles over the scruff he was growing out into a beard for her. She met his eyes and whispered, "Do it again. The kissing part, not the shoving."

He tried to be gentle this time, knowing he still moved like a brute as he put one hand on her waist and the other on her face. He kissed her warmly, deeply, tasting wine and food and something much more visceral on her swollen lips. An ember that had been burning flared up into a flame then; he felt some of his self-control slipping away as he pressed his body against hers.

"It almost hurts," he confessed, and when Belle looked confused, he specified, "How much I love you."

"I don't want to hurt you," Belle told him, gnawing on her lip. Suddenly he realized she must be able to feel the way he'd gone a bit hard for her. He was flush against her, and he himself was acutely aware of the lump that was pushing against her abdomen. But if she was frightened or disgusted, she didn't show it. Instead, she reached around his head and pulled at the ribbon that bound his hair back. She tucked the ribbon into her apron pocket as his hair fell around his face. Belle coursed her fingers through his locks, her honey-colored eyes locked on his as her hands rubbed his scalp. Adam shut his eyes and sucked in breath, wanting her very badly in all sorts of utterly inappropriate ways.

"Can I ask you something?" he heard her say timidly, and he just grunted his assent. When he opened his eyes, Belle's cheeks had gone scarlet and her voice shook. "How did you… when you were not human, did you… What I mean to say is, how did _that_, you know…" She trailed off, and Adam shook his head helplessly.

"I can't read your mind, Belle."

She wrenched her eyes closed, making a little sound of frustration from where she was pinned against the wall. She kept her eyes closed and asked in a quick blur of embarrassed words, "How did the most manly part of your body work when you weren't human?"

Adam nearly laughed aloud at that. Instead he just pulled back from her a little and waited until she gave him a humiliated, withered sort of look. He cocked up an eyebrow and tipped his head.

"It was very large and very hairy and went almost entirely unused. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"No! I mean… I don't know what I was asking. It was wrong of me to ask at all. I'm sorry." Belle seemed very irritated with herself, pushing off from the wall as she insisted, "You're your human self now. That's what matters."

"Oh, so you just care about that part of my anatomy when it's human." Adam was teasing her now, and Belle looked more aggrieved than ever. She touched her fingertips to her forehead, shaking her head and wincing through an awkward, rambling apology. Adam felt badly then for mocking her, and he brought her hand from her face, wrapping it in his. When she finally looked up at him, he shrugged.

"You're a curious girl, full of curious questions," he acknowledged. "I'll answer whatever ones I can. I was never _with_ anyone, not like that, when I was in my beastly form. Did I ever attend to myself during those long, very lonely years? Of course. It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise. I'd had my fun before the curse. But when I was inhuman, there was no fun in any of that. No real enjoyment to be had. And even once I'd fallen in love with you… it was as you said. It would have been odd and off and probably wrong. But it doesn't matter now."

The mortified crimson flush on Belle's cheeks had faded to a pale pink, and she nodded with a little smile. She pulled her hand from his and said delicately, "I think I'll go to bed early. I want to finish that Rousseau so I can pass it on to you."

"All right." Adam waited for her to go fetch her book from the dining-room table, and as she started to go, he said after her, "Goodnight, Belle."

She turned over her shoulder, flashing him a little smile and looking lovelier than ever. "Goodnight, my Prince."

* * *

'_Put an end to your childhood, friend, awaken. Do not turn your entire life over to a long slumber of reason. The years flow by; you have only enough left for becoming wise. At thirty years past, it is time to give some thought to oneself. Start then to search within yourself, and be a man once before you die.'_

Belle set down her copy of _Julie_, her eyelids growing heavy with fatigue. She blew out the candle on the table beside her and lay back against her pillows, staring up at the moonlit ceiling in her beautifully decorated room. Sometimes she still had difficulty accepting her new reality. She had long since come to grips with the validity of magic, with the fact that she was in a castle, and with the fact that her life in her tiny village was over. But the new reality, the one in which she was in love with a human prince, still felt foreign and bizarre.

She shut her eyes and tried unsuccessfully to sleep. For some reason, when she did finally doze off, she had a ghastly nightmare. Gaston was holding the Beast's head aloft, his arm dripping with blood as he shrieked in glee to the assembled mob. Gaston's gloved hands were wrapped around the Beast's horns, and he said proudly to LeFou, '_This will be mounted right above my bed. The bed where Belle will sleep._'

Belle gasped as she sat bolt upright, blinking in the darkness as her heart raced. It had started raining, she realized, pulling herself from her bed and standing in a small puddle as she shut the windows. She was very thirsty all of a sudden, feeling so horrified by her nightmare that she knew she would not find sleep again tonight.

She went to her wardrobe, scoffing a little laugh at the fact that it was just plain old furniture. She pulled out a dressing gown in lightweight, sage green silk, wrapping the garment around herself and binding it with shaking fingers. She didn't bother with slippers, reckoning that if she stepped on something, it would be her own fault. She took the candelabra - again, not a hidden human - from her dressing-table, and she made her way carefully from her room down to the kitchen. The castle was still and quiet; nearly everybody was asleep. So Belle tried to move as silently as she could, knowing she must still be making quite the clatter as she rifled through the tea supplied.

"My dear, are you quite all right?"

Belle gasped and stood up at the sound of Mrs. Potts' voice. The elder woman smiled kindly as she stepped from her own quarters off the kitchen. She set down her own candle and asked,

"Can I make you some tea, dear?"

"I… I'm just thirsty," Belle admitted. "Not necessarily for tea. I'm sorry to have awakened you."

"It's no trouble at all, dear," Mrs. Potts said, waving off Belle's concerns. She lit the stove and started putting water on to boil with the practiced ease of a longtime servant. Her movements were smooth and graceful, and Belle envied them. She wanted to help, but knew she'd just get in the way. By the time Mrs. Potts handed her a cup of tea, Belle smiled gratefully and said,

"You all kept him human, at least a little bit, during those years. I'm thankful."

"Well. We're thankful for you, dear," Mrs. Potts insisted. She brushed Belle's hair from her eyes with a motherly affection and asked, "What's got you up in the middle of the night, then?"

"A terrible dream," Belle said honestly, sipping her tea and letting the hot liquid sear her throat a bit. Mrs. Potts gave a knowing nod and suggested,

"You're nervous about the fête this week, aren't you?"

"Well I wasn't. Not until now," Belle laughed. The Prince was hosting the surrounding villagers for a summer party in the castle's gardens, having heeded Belle's advice that exposure would quell the curiosity of his newly-enraptured subjects. Belle dragged her thumb around the rim of her teacup and said very seriously,

"I'm just glad Gaston won't be able to attend the fête."

"Ah." Mrs. Potts nodded gravely, understanding coming over her face. "So it was that kind of dream." She drew her fingers over her thick braid and nodded sadly. "That was a frightening night. You may have visions of it for some time, I'm afraid. Perhaps try and think of the good that came of that night. There was quite a lot of good that I remember."

Belle shut her eyes and remembered the way Adam's enchanted body had lifted into the air, the way his human form had morphed into being as the curse gave way. She remembered the way he'd looked at her, relief and uncertainty blending in his pale blue eyes. She smiled and opened her eyes, sipping from her tea again.

"I saw your gown for the garden party," Mrs. Potts said knowingly. "Silk the color of fresh butter. You're wearing yellow to remind him of that first dance, aren't you?"

Belle smirked and sipped her tea again. "Maybe."

It had been Madame de Garderobe's idea to wear yellow, to hearken back to that night in the ballroom, but mercifully she'd let the castle's seamstresses make the gown. Belle was rather looking forward to wearing the pretty frock, and when she thought of dancing with Adam in the gardens, she found herself grinning.

"Look at the lady; she's beaming like the sun," said Mrs. Potts quietly. She patted Belle's shoulder and told her, "Try and get some sleep, my dear. Sun'll be up soon enough."

"Thank you, Mrs. Potts." Belle watched the kind-eyed woman go back to her rooms, remembering how she'd looked as a teapot. When Belle finished her tea and set the empty cup on the butcher block, she stared at it for a long while, remembering the first time she'd met little Chip as a cup. She swallowed hard and made her way out of the kitchens, climbing the enormous staircase with brisk steps.

"Belle?"

She whirled around to see Adam across the landing, leaning onto the west end of the balustrade. He gave her a crooked little smile and said,

"So I'm not the only one having trouble sleeping tonight."

Belle walked toward him, examining the way his chiseled features came to life in the flickering candlelight. She stared at him for a moment and then said very honestly,

"I dreamed that Gaston took your head as a trophy. He was going to hang it above a bed where he'd make me his wife."

Adam shook his head. "You never would have let him do either of those things, Belle. It was just a nightmare. A very unrealistic one."

"Still frightening," Belle admitted. She looked away, her eyes coming to rest on the inlaid marble in the floor. She sniffed lightly and murmured, "_She, much amazed, breaks ope her locked-up eyes. Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold, are by his flaming torch dimmed and controlled. Imagine her as one in dead of night from forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, that thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking_."

"Belle." Adam cut off her recitation of Shakespeare's terrifying ode to Lucretia with one sharp word. He held his own candelabra in one hand and threaded his fingers into Belle's hair. He shook his head and said firmly, "That was never going to happen to you. Your father would never have let that happen. _You_, Belle, would never have let that happen. And I would have taken a hundred of his gunshots - a thousand of them - to keep it from happening. You are safe now. He is gone."

Belle nodded up at him and admitted, "I was more disturbed my your fate in the nightmare than my own."

"But I am here," he reminded her, and suddenly she couldn't help her eyes from going to his chest, half-bared by his nightshirt, and then back up to his glittering blue eyes.

"Yes," she whispered. "You are indeed here."

He tipped his head and sighed as he asked, "May I please walk you back to your room?"

Belle just nodded, putting her hand on his arm as they made their way to the East Wing.

"Good evening. Yes. Hello. Welcome." The Prince wandered slowly through the dense crowd in his freshly revitalized gardens. He nodded in greeting, receiving curtsies and bows and whispering stares. Madame de Garderobe was singing with the small orchestra that had come for the event. Wine was flowing, tables overflowed with pastries and savory hors d'oeuvres. As the sun went down, the twinkling lights of torches and lanterns lent the place a mystical air. It was all quite a sight, but it was nothing compared to the young woman upon whom Prince Adam had locked his eyes.

She'd worn yellow. A paler, more understated yellow than the last time, but yellow just the same. Belle stood in a little group of women, looking as though she were consumed by some sort of awkward conversation. The other ladies, with their heavily painted faces and towering wigs and fluttering fans, seemed utterly artificial in comparison to Belle. She was Rousseau's dream - the picture of authenticity. Her hair was curled and tied back by a simple cream-colored ribbon. Her gown was elegant but understated. And her beautiful face was mercifully devoid of the chalk-white paint and bright pink lips the other women boasted. Adam stared for a moment, almost overcome by how very pretty she was in comparison to everyone else.

"Oh! Madeleines… I used to love eating Madeleines in Paris."

Adam turned his face at the sound of the familiar voice. Maurice, Belle's father, had appeared at a small dessert table, and if he was speaking to anyone in particular, Adam couldn't see them. He smiled a little and walked to the table, saying in a cautious tone,

"Good evening, Monsieur."

Maurice startled and looked up, a napkin with four or five Madeleines balanced carefully in his hand. Maurice grinned nodded, giving a cursory little bow.

"Quite the party, Your Highness."

Adam was more than a little uncomfortable with Maurice calling him that, but he was unsure of how to correct it. Instead he drummed his fingers on the table and said quietly, "I imagine it can't be very pleasant for you to come back to this castle. For that I apologize."

"But it isn't the same castle where I was held prisoner," Maurice insisted, looking confused. "And, in any case, this is where my daughter discovered her own true happiness. Where she fell in love. How could I be unhappy here?"

Adam gulped, feeling shame go straight to his core. He pursed his lips and admitted, "It is not difficult to see where Belle acquired her good nature."

Maurice laughed, popping a Madeleine into his mouth. He spoke with his mouth full then as he chuckled, "Oh, no. Belle is quite her own person. She is who she is very much in spite of me. She's just over there, trying to make some friends." He pointed over his shoulder, and then his eyes crinkled as he said, "I promised her I'd stay out of her way. But she's always struggled with socializing. Not something she enjoys. Perhaps you could go help her."

"I'm not any better," the prince insisted, his eyes going wide with horror at the notion. But Maurice glanced at his daughter again and said,

"Perhaps you could just go be a bit awkward with her, then, so she isn't alone in doing so."

Adam scoffed and nodded. "She hardly needs help. With anything. Just the same, it would be an honor to stand beside her. It always is."

"She loves you," Maurice announced. "She told me so in a letter."

Adam nodded, suddenly unable to mask his emotion. He met Maurice's eyes and said firmly, "I don't deserve that from her, but it is… more than reciprocated."

"I'm going to eat these Madeleines," Maurice said lightly, "and I'm going to go listen to the music. Go rescue my daughters from those awful painted women, will you?"

"I'll do my best." The prince bowed to Maurice and kept moving toward where Belle stood. As he approached, the three women near her dipped into overly-deep curtsies. Adam was suddenly hurtled back to the dark days before the curse, when he'd been a selfish, hedonistic mess of a man. He'd lived for the simpering, sycophantic attentions of young women then. But he was a different man now. He ignored the quietly giggling women in their wide gowns and turned his attention to Belle. He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing her knuckles and locking his eyes onto hers. He didn't look away from her as he told the other women,

"I apologize for stealing her away, ladies, but I must have a dance."

Belle smirked and murmured a farewell over her shoulder as Adam guided her away. As they walked toward the parquet dance floor that had been laid out in front of the orchestra, the prince told her,

"I promised your father I'd just stand there and be awkward with you."

She snorted a little laugh and said up to him, "I'd rather dance."

"Good." He moved around her on the dance floor through a gavotte that was just fast enough to prohibit real conversation. Instead he just focused on the feel of her hand on his, on the way her skirts moved smoothly around her, the way she seemed so much more free than anyone else at the party. He looked at her lips, at her cheeks, at her eyes and her hair and her collarbone. He thought of her, the day earlier, lecturing him about the poetry of the Valois court. Finally the gavotte ended, and a slower minuet took over. Adam let his arm lace around Belle's tiny waist as she smiled up at him and slowly turned round.

"Thank you for rescuing me from those girls," she said. "They were from a village I've never been to, but it seems like many girls from small villages are alike. They just wanted to impress their future princess. Don't worry. I corrected them."

She rolled her eyes and laughed a little, and Adam frowned deeply. He gently touched her fingers and stepped out, the two of them moving like orbiting planets as he demanded,

"What do you mean, you corrected them?"

A strange look came over Belle's eyes, and suddenly Adam realized he'd never asked her to marry him. For some reason, he'd spent these last weeks assuming it would happen. After all, he was madly in love with her, and she'd said she was in love with him. She was living in his castle. Of course they would be wed. It was hardly ludicrous of the village girls to assume such a thing.

But Belle had never said she would become the prince's wife. His heart thudded as the two of them separated, drawn many steps away from one another by the conventions of the minuet. When Adam did the requisite little kick step, he nearly stumbled, still so wobbly and uncertain with movement in this human form. He stared at Belle with his hands knitting together behind his back, thinking he just might throw up all the pastries he'd eaten. When the dance finally permitted him to take her hand again, he stopped dancing entirely.

"What's the matter?" Belle asked, her own feet stopping short. The prince tightened his fingers around hers and asked in the steadiest voice he could manage,

"Please, will you marry me?"

She smiled then, lowering her eyes to the ground demurely. She nodded and finally looked back up at him. "Of course I will."

The minuet ended then, and there was a smattering of applause for the music and the singing. Adam could hear none of it. He could hear only his own breath, his own human heartbeat. He could see only Belle's lovely honey-colored eyes, her delicate features that belied the iron soul inside her. He hadn't released her hand, he realized, and he had to struggle to make himself do it. Belle curtsied, the way she had been meant to do at the end of the minuet that had long faded into silence. The prince bowed to her, more deeply than he's bowed to anyone tonight, and he murmured gently,

"Thank you."

* * *

"What do you mean, Papa?" Belle glared at her father, who shrugged as he sipped at a glass of rich Bordeaux.

"It's nothing to fret over, Belle. I've been forgetting things worse than usual. Sometimes I forget where our house is, or if I've eaten breakfast, or whether I've fed Phillippe, or -"

"You forget where our house is?" Belle repeated. She shook her head, feeling a pit of dread in her stomach. "It isn't safe for you to be on your own, Papa, if this is happening to your mind."

Maurice's eyes were very sad then, and he shook his head. "You are grown, Belle. It is not for you to take care of your absent minded old father. It is for you to find joy, and I think you have found it in this castle."

"There's more than enough room for you here!" Belle insisted, but her father covered her hand with his.

"This is _your_ home now," he reminded her. "My home, when I can find it, is perfectly serviceable."

"If you won't come stay here, then I'm coming home to stay with you," Belle said, scowling. Maurice shut his eyes and shook his head.

"Belle. If you really and truly love your father, then live the life you have been gifted here. Leave me to my minuscule troubles; I've had far, far worse. I am fine. I promise you. I am perfectly fine."

Belle gnawed on her bottom lip and said, "Please, Papa, will you write me a letter every other day? So I know you're all right? If it goes a week and I don't hear from you, I'll come check on you. And I'm going to speak with Père Robert. If it gets any worse, I'd like him to check on you every day."

Maurice touched his daughter's face, and she covered her hand with his. "What a precious daughter I have," he said, "to worry over me so when she surely has good news to share."

Belle grinned and took a half step back. "How did you know?"

"That prince of yours seemed awfully nervous on that dance floor," Maurice noted, "and then he seemed very happy. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

"He didn't ask you first?" Belle mused, and Maurice laughed as he shook his head.

"No. I think he knows better than that. You don't need my permission, and he knows that full well. So. When is the wedding?"

Belle laughed and shook her head. "No date as of yet. No plans at all. Just a question and a _yes_."

"As it should be," Maurice nodded. He glanced around the beautiful gardens and said warmly, "How happy I am for you, Belle, that you have found that great wide somewhere you always talked about. But I must be going; Père Robert has been kind enough to offer to take me home in his sturdy cart. And I believe he has an early Mass to say in the morning."

Belle nodded, kissing her father's cheek as she noted, "I don't have to promise you I'll escape this time."

"No," Maurice said, his eyes welling up a bit. He glanced over to where Prince Adam was speaking with a bent old man, and he turned back to Belle. "This time you're exactly where you're meant to be. Goodnight, my dear."

**Author's Note: This is a re-post. I'll put up a new chapter every few days. Thanks for reading, and please do leave a review.**


	2. Chapter 2

Adam's fist hovered in the air beside Belle's door. He couldn't quite summon the courage to knock. She was probably already asleep. After all, the garden party had ended nearly two hours ago and it was now properly the middle of the night. He himself was rather inappropriately clad in a nightshirt and a velvet banyan that felt entirely too heavy for the summer night. He remembered the last time he'd come banging down her door, roaring at her about starving since she wouldn't sit at a table with him. That hadn't been so very long ago, all things considered.

Somehow he managed to knock three times, loudly enough that she would hear if she was awake, but softly enough not to rouse her from sleep. A long moment passed, and he considered turning around and walking back to the West Wing. But then the ironmongery on the door creaked, and the heavy wood swung slowly open to reveal her standing in the threshold. She was even more indecent than he was, having eschewed anything over her perilously thin nightgown. Adam averted his eyes and said quietly,

"Oh. I woke you. I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's fine," she said with a yawn. "I'd only just fallen asleep. Would you like to come in?"

"To your room?" the prince balked, shaking his head and insisting, "That seems like a bad idea."

Belle giggled quietly, reaching for his face and making him find her eyes. She stared at him through the dim light of his candelabra, and she shrugged. "If you didn't want to come inside, why did you come at all?"

He didn't have a good answer for that. He'd been troubled with more sleeplessness, and he'd decided that the cure might be to see her. So he followed her into her room and shut the door behind him. He stared across the elegant space to the window that looked out over the gardens where the party had been.

"Is that the window you were going to use to escape?" he asked incredulously. Belle nodded, but she admitted,

"I had scraps of fabric tied together, but it wasn't long enough. I would have fallen and died, probably."

"Hmm. Very lucky, then, I suppose, that Lumière was hellbent on disobeying me to feed you dinner."

"That was lucky," Belle agreed. She took the candelabra from his hand and set it on her dressing-table, and she put her hands on his shoulders as she said, "You know what else was lucky? Me, earlier tonight, dancing with you. The question you asked me. Did you mean it?"

"Of course I did!" Adam felt a strike of indignant surprise go through him. His hands settled on Belle's waist, feeling the warmth of her skin through her thin nightgown. "I… _need_ you, Belle. Please."

"What do you mean?" she asked rather nervously. Suddenly it occurred to the prince that she might think he meant tonight, physically. He blinked quickly, releasing her waist as he stammered,

"I - I mean, I can not properly contemplate the idea of… of living the rest of my life without you. I would prefer if you were my wife for it all. That's what I mean, and I'm making a fool of myself now, because I -"

"No." Belle shook her head and moved her hands from his shoulders to his face. She put her hands on his cheeks, which were now covered in the silky beginnings of a beard. She pulled his face down to hers and whispered against his mouth, "You're anything but a fool."

She kissed him, and his hands flew straight back to her waist. She encouraged him to deepen the kiss, and he did. She tasted sweet. Her tongue was gentle and slow. Her lips were soft. And her waist felt fantastic beneath his hands. Adam growled, sounding far more feral than he'd intended, as he went hard between his legs. He snarled, sounding more like the Beast than he'd done since the transformation, when Belle's fingers drifted between the folds of his banyan robe.

"Belle," he hissed, but she stared at him as resolutely as if their lives depended on what she meant to do. Her breath quickened, very evidently from arousal and not fear. She pushed her hand up beneath his nightshirt and whispered,

"If you don't want it, tell me to stop."

Adam was very convinced his feeble human knees would give out on him as he felt her hand wrap around his hardened shaft. She was unpracticed. He could tell that by the arrhythmic, unsteady motion of her hand on him. It didn't matter. No one else had touched him in so long that he'd entirely forgotten what it felt like.

It felt wonderful.

"You were having trouble sleeping again," Belle said knowingly, her thumb rubbing his tip and making him feel dizzy. He nodded frantically. Belle used her free hand to pull his mouth down to hers again. "You'll sleep better now."

He crushed her mouth so fiercely that she whined in pain a little, but Adam was still only just able to take his hands from her hair and his mouth from his. What little remnant of the Beast remained within him was rearing up, the uncontrolled animal that was left in his soul. He forced himself to be calm and gentle and _human_ with her, pulling back from Belle and panting through clenched teeth. She looked a little surprised by the force that had come over him, but her hand relentlessly spread the drop of fluid from his tip. She began to pump her hand in smoother motions, learning quickly as she always did. Suddenly Adam realized he had only the briefest moment left, and he whirled away from her and started searching frantically on her dressing-table for a handkerchief.

"Is something wrong?" Belle asked cautiously, and he snarled over his shoulder,

"It's going to make a colossal mess is all. I need a… a…"

"This?"

When he turned back around, Belle was pulling a handkerchief from a small pile on the shelf inside her wardrobe. Adam nodded, feeling his cheeks go hot with embarrassed want. Belle shut the wardrobe and strode back to him, confidently reaching her hand back through his robe and up his nightshirt. The prince shut his eyes as the feel of her hand made everything go warm and taut, but he heard her whisper.

"Please look at me." When he did, she smiled and nodded. "Those blue eyes are everything."

That was entirely too much, and Adam swung a fist blindly through the air at an invisible target. This time when he took Belle's face, he couldn't stop himself from bruising her lips or squeezing her jaw. She squealed as he spilled himself into the handkerchief she had balled up against him, her hand still moving on his length. Overwhelmed in so many ways, Adam ripped her hand away and panted,

"Too much. Too much."

"Sorry," Belle whispered. As he recovered, she discreetly put the filthy handkerchief in her wicker laundry basket and washed her hands at her little basin. Adam watched her move and said into the dark room,

"Why did you do that?"

She cocked up an eyebrow at him and asked, "Did I make you angry by doing it?"

"No." He shook his head, but he still wanted an answer. Why had an unpracticed young woman, the definition of virginal, so boldly taken him in her hand and pleasured him like that? She gave him a shrewd little smile as she led him to the edge of her bed.

"There are things mentioned in some books - most of the time obliquely; very rarely explicitly - and I was curious. Besides, I'm to be your wife. Shouldn't I… know you?"

Adam was still catching his breath, but he managed to scoff out a little laugh. "Are you very disappointed you never got to do that to me before?"

Belle giggled, her cheeks reddening even in the darkness. She shrugged and shook her head. "I doubt my hand would have fit around it. It barely does now."

Adam felt a flush of surprise at just how unapologetically frank her mind was. He tucked some hair behind her ear, some that had fallen loose of her thick sleeping braid, and his face went serious.

"You really think your father's mind is getting less clear?"

Her smile vanished at the change of subject. She nodded. "He's always been absentminded, but this seems different."

"Then we should marry while he can still be clear-headed in walking you down the aisle to me," Adam said. He quickly amended, "Not that you of all people would need someone to give you away; you're more than capable of giving yourself away, or really taking someone else on, but -"

"I appreciate you thinking of him," Belle cut in. She covered his hand with hers and sighed. "Perhaps when I write to Père Robert, asking him to check in regularly on my father, I can ask if he'd be willing to marry us sooner rather than later."

"You know your father could live here," Adam insisted. He glanced around the room and said, "There are ten more like this."

Belle nodded. "I offered. Hope you don't mind. But he refused; he says I'm meant to have my own life as a grown woman, and he doesn't want to impede."

The prince furrowed his brow, remembering how little his own father had actually cared for his emotions or needs. He sighed and reminded Belle,

"You know, the book is still enchanted. The traveling book. I'm not sure why the enchantress - Agathe - left it, but… if there's anywhere you might like to go tomorrow. Like a holiday."

Belle's face broke into a wide smile, and she said firmly. "To fair Verona."

Adam rolled his eyes and reminded her, "Romeo and Juliet are not real."

"No. But Belle and her prince are real," she said, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to push her onto her back and rip off her nightgown and kiss every inch of her before making love to her. But because he wanted that, and he wanted it so badly, he rose from the edge of the bed and said,

"I'm going back to my own room. Trust me… it's better if I do."

She stood and put one hand to his lightly bearded cheek. She smiled a little as she whispered, "You're very human now, but sometimes I still see him. Sometimes I still fear him, just a little bit."

"I don't want you to be afraid," Adam insisted, and Belle raised her other hand to his face. She shook her head and assured him,

"If I can drag you to Verona in that book with me tomorrow, then there's nothing to really be afraid of, I don't think. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," he said, but his feet didn't carry him away from her. Finally he lowered his face for one last kiss, a slow and gentle press of his lips to hers as her fingers stroked his face and beard. His heart pounded like a drum in his chest for her, but somehow he managed to pull away and nod and say again, "Goodnight."

Belle was very glad, suddenly, that she and her prince were like ghosts in this place. She was glad the others in the bustling piazza market couldn't see the way her eyes were welling with tears being here. Nobody else could understand how important Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers had been to keeping Belle sane in her vapid little village. Her boots paused on the laid stone of the sunny piazza, and she studied the plaster houses and green shutters around the square.

"I've heard there's a house that claims to be Juliet's," said Adam, "but it seems more likely that they simply have a particularly suitable balcony."

Belle laughed a bit and took his hand, gesturing up a random balcony. "It was probably that one."

The prince smiled up at the balcony, for its shuttered doors opened and a haggard old woman came outside to water her flowers. As she bent, Adam said quietly upward,

"_But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief_…" He trailed off and admitted down to Belle, "I don't exactly have the whole play memorized."

She felt a flush of amusement that he had any of it memorized at all. She smirked up at him and said quietly, "_That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title_."

Adam tipped his head and requested, "Can we both try very hard not to have our story end like theirs?"

"That seems fair," Belle agreed. She took in the sights and sounds and smells of the bustling market, and she admitted, "I'm hungry, and we can't buy or eat anything here."

"Back to France, then?" her prince suggested, and Belle nodded as she took one more look around.

"We can always come back."

"Someday I'll take you to Verona in person," Adam informed her, "and I'll even buy you food while we're there."

* * *

"Mistress Belle!"

She turned round to see Chip dashing through the gardens. Belle felt her stomach sink, for her father's letter was overdue, and Chip seemed to be running with an awful sort of urgency. She started walking toward Chip, hiking up the skirts of her sturdy pink dress. When Chip reached her, he was breathless and red-cheeked, and he shoved a rolled up parchment at Belle.

"This came by a messenger on a horse, Mistress Belle!" he proclaimed. "The man said it was a _really_ important letter and that I must bring it to you at once."

"Thank you, Chip," Belle said, examining the cross on the wax seal. She forced a little smile and told the boy, "I think you've earned yourself a pastry or two. You tell them in the kitchen I said it was fine."

He giggled and called his thanks over his shoulder as he dashed off. Belle broke the wax seal and unfurled the scroll to find two separate sheets of parchment in two very different scripts. She first read the one whose handwriting she recognized at once as belonging to her father.

_My Dearest Belle,_

_I'm sorry I've forgotten to write these last few days. I thought I'd done so, you see, and it turned out I hadn't. I'm very sorry if I worried you. I've been working very hard on a new clock to take to market, but I'll have to get Phillippe back before then. Agathe, the good woman, is taking care of Phillippe for me for the time being. Unfortunately I went nearly a week without feeding him - very much on accident - and he broke free of his little home in search of food. Agathe assures me he is well-fed and happy with her. She is a good woman. I hope you are well-fed and happy, too, Belle. All my love._

_Papa_

Belle frowned deeply as she read the letter again, and then a third time. She swallowed heavily as she tucked her father's letter behind the other page, which was stamped at the top with the seal of the village's parish church. This one was from Père Robert, she realized. Her heart started to race with anxiety as she read the priest's neat, thin script.

_Mademoiselle Belle,_

_I want to reassure you that I have been checking in on your father daily. Monsieur Maurice seems in very good spirits, but I worry over his ability to function very much longer on his own. I found the attached letter on his desk in his house; he had forgotten entirely to send it to you. Yesterday, he was found by the well in the center of the village, and he was uncertain of the day of the week or why he'd left home._

_I know you have invited him to stay in the castle, and I have likewise extended an invitation to him to stay here at the church. He rejects nearly all forms of help. At this point, he is still cognizant enough that he can not be forced to accept treatment or assistance. Please know that I am keeping the most careful and merciful eye on him that I can. I will keep you apprised, but I have seen cases like this before. He has been forgetful and absentminded for some time, I believe, but his grip on his mind seems to be slipping quickly._

_Both you and your father have my devoted prayers and attentions. Warmest regards with the love of Christ,_

_Père Robert_

Belle dashed up the stairs that led to the castle's enormous front doors, flinging one open and running as quickly as she could through the foyer. Her boots clamored up the swooping staircase, and as she ran toward the West Wing, she called,

"Adam!"

Her voice ricocheted off the stone, and by the time she reached his sunroom, she was entirely out of breath. Her prince appeared on the staircase, one arm still on the threshold of his sunroom as he asked worriedly,

"What's the matter?"

Belle shoved the letters toward him, following him into the sunroom and accepting the glass of lemon water he poured for her. He read the letters in silence, his face falling into an expression of deep concern. He finally set the letters down on his desk and chewed his lip for a moment.

"The sun will be setting very soon," he noted. "It's a bad idea to go tonight."

Belle shut her eyes, grateful that he understood her need to see her father. She sighed and asked, "Have you got a cart I can take in the morning?"

When she met Adam's gaze then, he shook his head and said firmly, "You won't go alone… not unless you don't want me there. We'll take a carriage."

"Oh. You don't have to come," Belle insisted, feeling rather embarrassed of her little village all of a sudden. Adam stepped over to her and put a hand on her cheek.

"The dukes and princes of this country are scattered through the countryside very much on purpose. I've spent many years, Belle, living in a secluded castle, isolated from reality. It never did me any good. And, anyway… I'm worried."

"Worried?" Belle repeated, and he nodded.

"What if you don't like what you see?" Adam suggested. "It might be better to have a comfortable seat for your father if he wants to come back with us. It might be better for you not to be trying to drive a cart on your own. Please, will you go with me in a carriage?"

Belle put her lips into a straight line and nodded. "You're a good man," she informed the prince, and he scoffed a little.

"I'm not," he insisted quietly. "I love you, that's all."

He started to turn away, toward the window, and Belle let him go. She made her way out of the sunroom and down the stairs, thinking to herself that she was very glad indeed that Gaston hadn't been allowed to pine after her any more than he'd done. Perhaps the Beast had been cruel and short-tempered, but the man who'd been beneath it all was, at his core, good. He was a good man.

* * *

Prince Adam stared out the window of his bedchamber and shook his head. This was a veritable downpour. The roads to the village would be impassable. But he'd dressed just the same, pulling on dark brown woolen breeches and stockings and a matching frock coat. If he was going to wind up covered in mud, he reckoned, he should at least blend in.

He was utterly unsurprised by the sound of knocking on his bedroom door, and when he opened it, he was even less surprised to see Belle standing there in her own iteration of hard-knock clothing. She'd put on brown, too, and Adam couldn't help but smirk a little at how they'd both decided to camouflage with the mud. Her skirts were hiked up and tucked into the belt of her plain peasant dress, revealing the legs of her printed toile drawers and her sturdy brown boots. She'd tied her hair into a single tight braid that came over one shoulder, and she had her red woolen cape over one arm.

"I'll go on my own," she said resolutely, and Adam rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Of course you won't," he said, as gently as he could manage. "There's a reason I'm dressed like this."

"Well, let's go, then," Belle said, turning from the doorway. The prince sighed and followed her down the steps and through the corridors of the West Wing.

When they came out to the main landing, Cogsworth was waiting for them with a basket and a corked jug.

"Lumière and I thought perhaps you might want some bread and cheese for the way, Mademoiselle," he said, passing the basket to Belle. Then he handed the corked jug to his master and added, "And some water."

"Thank you, Cogsworth," Belle said gratefully. Cogsworth gave them both a meaningful look and said,

"Be safe, will you, please? None of us would like to be left without our prince and his lady."

* * *

He'd been right. The roads were inches upon inches of slick, dangerous muck. It was slow-going, and the poor coachman was left out in the rain trying to maneuver the carriage. Belle sat across from Adam inside the carriage, pretending to read a book. When she went a half hour without turning a page, he said quietly to her,

"We'll bring him back with us if he will come."

She just nodded, still staring down at her book. Suddenly there was a loud crack, and the carriage lurched to a halt. Belle set her book down, her eyes wide and worried as Adam flung open the door of the carriage. When he stepped down onto the muddy road, he found the coachman peering beneath the vehicle.

"It looks like we've broken an axle, Master," the man said. He shot the prince a grave look, his tricorn hat dripping with rainwater as he shook his head and said,

"I may need to walk to the nearest village and find a wheelwright."

"Nonsense," came a voice from the carriage, and suddenly Belle was leaping down onto the mud. Her boots squelched in the muck as she made her way around the rear of the carriage, apparently examining the situation. She finally raised her head to the coachman and asked, "Have you got some rope?"

"Erm… yes, Mademoiselle." The coachman opened the storage box attached to the back of the carriage and pulled out a looped length of rope. He hesitated as he handed it to Belle, who seized the rope and disappeared beneath the back of the carriage. Adam, suddenly concerned she might get hurt, ordered the coachman,

"Go keep the horses still."

"Yes, Master." The coachman stared back at Belle as he walked up to the team of horses. The prince just watched in wonder as Belle came back out, rubbing her hands together briskly and sounding a little out of breath.

"The axle's cracked; it's not fully broken. It's bound together enough that we'll make it to the village. It's not too much further, anyway. There's a good wheelwright there, and we should have the axle replaced before we make our return journey. Let's keep going."

Adam was almost in shock at her mechanical competence, at the way she cared nothing for getting her hands dirty in the name of carrying onward. He thought of all the frilly-frocked, face-painted giggling ladies who had fawned over him years earlier, and he felt more of a fool than ever. He made a move to help Belle back up into the carriage, but she scrambled up on her own before he could assist her. He pulled the carriage door shut behind them, and when the horses whinnied to the crack of the whip, they were on their way again.

Belle huffed out a breath and reached for the corked jug of water, swigging from it and then setting it back on the floor by her feet. Her braided hair glistened with water, and flecks of mud speckled her alabaster cheeks. The prince pulled a handkerchief from his frock coat and leaned across to dab at Belle's muddy face. She smiled a little and murmured,

"Sorry."

"For what?" he asked seriously, replacing his handkerchief with his lips, a bit overcome by her. As he kissed her cheekbone, she whispered,

"Sorry I'm not the pretty little lady I ought to be."

"No. You're precisely who you ought to be," Adam answered her. He moved his lips to hers for a moment, suddenly wanting nothing more than to peel off the wet layers of her dress and petticoats. He was surprised when she leaned farther forward, coming across the carriage and hiking up her skirts. She put a knee on either side of his hips, straddling him as she kissed him again.

"Belle," he heard himself whisper frantically, knowing he'd gone hard and knowing she could feel it. But she ground her hips down against him and moved her lips to his neck, sending him into a frenzy he couldn't escape. He was growling now, he knew, snarling like the beast he'd once been. His hands pawed roughly at her chest, and her back and waist, and all the while Belle kissed his wet skin. Suddenly Adam knew that he was about to lose control, that he was on the verge of tearing open his breeches and shoving himself up into her open drawers.

"Belle," he gasped, shoving her back across the carriage so hard that she crumpled onto the seat. He shut his eyes and covered the lump in his breeches with his hands. He tried to sound steady, knowing he was failing. "I wasn't going to be able to stop."

He opened his eyes to see Belle, pink-cheeked and wide-eyed, as she arranged her skirts back down around her legs. She just nodded silently, and both of them stared out the fogged-up window for another hour.

* * *

"So… this is it," Belle said, gesturing around the rainy village square. Owing to the terrible weather, only a few people were out and about, and their coachman had taken the carriage for repairs.

"It's very… erm… quaint," Adam tried, but Belle flashed him a knowing look and rolled her eyes.

"Boring. You mean to say 'boring.' Oh, good morning, Madame Regnier."

"G-good morning," said an older peasant woman carrying a yoke with buckets of water. Suddenly she realized who the man beside Belle was, and she attempted a curtsy so suddenly that her water nearly sloshed out entirely. She raised her wrinkled eyes to the prince and stammered, "Your… Your Grace. Good morning."

"Morning." Adam felt acutely uncomfortable. He'd never made a point of venturing into the villages he'd taxed to oblivion. Now he felt rather terrible, seeing the scrappy lives led by the subjects who had funded his lavish parties.

"This is my house just here," Belle said, gesturing up to a crooked-looking farmhouse perched on a shallow hill. It had plaster and exposed timber and a thatched roof. There was no denying it was the home of a peasant. Adam hesitated in the little front garden, noticing the chickens that were flitting about his feet. He thought perhaps Belle might want privacy if she was going to speak with Maurice. But she looked down from the top of the steps, rain-soaked and frowning, and she told him, "Come on up."

He did, his fine shoes slipping a little on the steps. Belle jabbed a key from her belt into the door, and it creaked loudly as she pulled it open. Adam followed her inside the cramped main space. Little models and drawings were everywhere among the modest furniture and household goods. Where the castle had porcelain and silver, this place had crockery and tin. Adam realized for the very first time just how humble Belle's life had always been, and he wondered again at how very unimpressed she seemed by life in an actual castle.

She was at a crowded work desk, and she held up a piece of paper. "It's from Père Robert," she said. She read the paper aloud. "_Monsieur Maurice is at the church._ Something's wrong. We have to go there at once."

Adam nodded, and as Belle rushed outside, he watched her fling a handful of feed down onto the grass for the chickens. She trotted down the stairs and out the little gate, and Adam said cautiously from behind her,

"It's… lovely. The house."

"You don't need to pretend," she said over her shoulder. "You grew up in a castle. My house isn't _lovely_, but it's been home for some time now."

The rain had let up considerably, and it was getting much warmer. Belle took her hood down and carried on quickly toward the stout village church. She ignored the stares of the villagers who marveled at her reappearance. The prince gave them the warmest looks and nods that he could, but he kept up with Belle as they approached the stone church. They both hurried to cross themselves with the Holy Water at the entrance, and then Belle scuttered through the sanctuary with the practice of someone who knew the place well. Down a narrow corridor, there was a sign that read _Priest's Rectory - Private._

"Père Robert?" Belle called, pushing open the door of the rectory. "Père Robert?

The dark-skinned, warm-eyed priest appeared in a doorway, a sorrowful look on his face as he said with a measure of pity. "Belle. Your Grace."

The priest gave a deep bow of his head with those last two words, and Adam realized the man had come to the garden party. He gave the priest a polite smile but cut straight to the point of why they'd come.

"Père Robert. Belle found a letter in the house saying her father was here."

"He's just this way," Père Robert said carefully, and from behind him, Adam heard a raucous bout of coughing and a weak voice call,

"Who's there?"

Belle gave her prince a worried look, and the two of them followed Père Robert into the small whitewashed room. A crucifix hung above a low, narrow bed, and on the bed was Maurice. He was propped up on pillows, looking pale and drawn as he studied their faces. For a rather unsettling instant, Maurice's eyes were utterly blank, and Adam realized he did not know his daughter.

"Papa," she said, her voice choked with emotion, "It's me. It's Belle."

Maurice's eyes warmed, and a little smiled came over his white lips. "Belle. My dearest. My beautiful girl."

Belle glanced over her shoulder, her lovely eyes shining with tears. Adam shook his head worriedly, and Belle rushed to her father's side. The prince took the opportunity to speak with Père Robert in the corridor.

"He needs a doctor," the priest said plainly. "I have no medical training; I couldn't tell you if it was consumption or pneumonia or something else ailing his lungs. He collapsed early this morning outside his house and was brought to me by some concerned neighbors."

"The nearest good hospital is where?" Adam asked. "Poitiers? We need to have him transported there at once. Carefully. He needs to be treated properly."

Père Robert seemed full of dread as he noted, "Your Grace, whatever is ravaging his mind and body is moving quickly. I fear it may not be long before he moves onto his everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven. With all respect, I am not sure that moving him is wise. It may be that bringing a doctor here to make him comfortable would be more merciful."

The prince stared into the room, watching as Belle held Maurice's hand and murmured gently to him. He turned to Père Robert and said in a grave voice,

"Belle and I are engaged to be married."

The priest smiled, though it didn't reach his dark eyes. "Congratulations."

Adam nodded. "I know Belle well enough to say definitively that she would rather eschew an elaborately-planned, enormous wedding so that her father could see her be married."

Père Robert gestured back out to the sanctuary through which Adam and Belle had come. "Your Grace," he said, "I am ready whenever the two of you are."

"Go and talk to Maurice for a moment, will you, Father?" Adam suggested. "And send Belle out here for a moment?"

"Of course." Père Robert stepped quietly into the room and whispered something to Belle. He pulled up a chair beside Maurice's bed and began speaking in a low, kind voice. Belle reluctantly stood and came out into the corridor, swiping tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist.

"We are in a church," the prince said immediately, and Belle seemed confused for a moment. But she was an intelligent woman, and she quickly caught on. Her eyes glittered as she blinked and said,

"Mrs. Potts and Lumière and the rest of them would be very sad to have missed it."

"It's more important that your father see it," Adam insisted. "We can have a party later for the others."

Belle glanced down at her feet and muttered, "To think that I would marry a prince in muddy boots."

"Belle." He took her face in his hands and put a kiss to her forehead as he assured her, "I find myself extremely unconcerned with the mud on your boots. Please, will you marry me?"

It was the same way he'd asked before, he knew. The way he'd asked at the garden party. But things were different now. Her father was dying. He wasn't being vague now. _Right now_, he ought to have asked. _Please, will you marry me right now?_ But Belle answered the exact same way she'd done before.

"Of course I will."


	3. Chapter 3

Belle wandered through the churchyard, trying to keep her hands steady as she gathered irises and tulips. The rain had let up, giving way to sun, so Père Robert had sent her out here to get some flowers for herself while he and the prince got her father cleaned up. The church's harpsichordist, Monsieur Le Blanc, was warming up inside the sanctuary, and would, along with Belle's father, serve as one of the requisite witnesses.

Belle stood from the churchyard garden and gasped quietly. Just on the other side of the little fence stood Agathe, the woman Belle had always known as someone whom marriage had bypassed. But now she knew the truth - Agathe had saved her father when Gaston had abandoned him in the woods. She'd been the one to put the curse on Adam's castle, and she'd been the one to lift it. Agathe was more powerful than anyone had ever suspected.

"Good afternoon, Agathe," Belle said quietly, and Agathe's mouth curled into a peaceful little smile. She beckoned Belle over, and once Belle reached the fence, Agathe held out a single red rose.

"Congratulations," she said, and Belle asked skeptically,

"Am I going to become inanimate when the last petal falls?"

Agathe laughed quietly and shook her head. "It's just a plain old rose," she insisted, and Belle murmured her thanks as she incorporated it into her haphazard bouquet. She studied Agathe's face and asked furtively,

"Can you save him? My father?"

Agathe's eyes went sad then, and the enchantress shook her head. "Not even magic can stave off the drumbeat of death, when he is so determined to take a victim."

Belle gulped hard and demanded, "He's going to die?"

"We all will, in our time," Agathe reminded her. "But I promise you this… your horse is fine. And when Maurice's pain exceeds what he deserves to suffer, it will dissolve like smoke in the air. I will help him know peace at the end of it all."

Belle's eyes welled heavily then, and she stared down at her flowers. "It seems odd that I should thank you for the curse you put on the castle, but without it, I never would have met the prince."

Agathe smiled again when Belle met her eyes. "Long and happy will your years with him be," she said. "Now close your eyes."

Belle did as the woman said, feeling an odd rustling and shifting around her body. When she opened her eyes again, Agathe was gone, vanished into the ether. Belle glanced down and gasped when she realized her sturdy brown clothes had been transformed into a lovely raw silk dress of the palest blue. She reached up to feel that her hair had been tied back into a knot at the base of her neck. A thin lace veil, the same pale blue as her dress, covered her head and fell demurely around her face. She blinked a few times, wishing she could thank Agathe again.

"Belle?"

She whirled around and saw her prince in the threshold of the door that led into the church. He narrowed his eyes and demanded,

"Where did you get that dress?"

Belle chewed her lip and said, "Do you of all people really want to interrogate me about something like this?"

Magic, she meant. He seemed to understand perfectly, and he shook his head a little. He leaned onto the threshold of the door and said, "You look beautiful. Père Robert and your father are ready to begin."

* * *

When Belle took her father's arm at the back of the church, she noticed just how gaunt he felt. He coughed a few times, quite roughly, and murmured an apology.

"You've absolutely nothing to apologize for," Belle insisted. "It's me who's got to apologize. I should never have left you here to get ill on your own like this."

"Belle." Maurice looked his daughter straight in the eyes, his gaze holding more clarity than it had done in some time. "Today is your wedding day, and from now on you live your own life. That will bring me more joy than anything else in all the world."

Suddenly Monsieur Le Blanc began playing an elegant minuet on the harpsichord, and Belle flashed her father a little smile. "Shall we go, then?"

She let him lean on her, doing most of the guiding as she clutched her flowers in one hand. At the end of the sanctuary, Père Robert and Adam stood waiting. There was a strange flash in Adam's eyes as he took in the sight of Belle approaching him. When at last Belle and her father reached the end of the aisle, Belle helped her father sit in a pew and moved to stand opposite Adam. She smiled at him, unable to contain her happiness at what was happening now.

"Belle, would you like to set your flowers down?" Père Robert suggested, and Belle startled. She dashed to the pew where her father sat, putting the flowers beside him. This was all much more haphazard than a wedding usually was, she knew, but she couldn't be bothered to care.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered today to bear witness to the celebration of matrimony between Belle and His Grace the Prince Adam," said Père Robert, with the smooth grace of one very accustomed to performing marriages. He didn't even use a book as he rushed through the early parts of the liturgy. He began to recite from the Book of Tobit, and all the while Belle had her eyes locked on her prince's. She only partially heard as Père Robert spoke. "... call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age. They said together, 'Amen, amen.' The word of the Lord."

"Thanks be to God," Adam said, obviously paying much more attention to everything happening than Belle was. She jolted and repeated the words, glancing over to her father and seeing the way he was daubing happy tears from his eyes. Belle was numb and shaking during the Psalm and the other readings, unable to move or speak or do much of anything. All she could do was stare at Adam, at the glimmer in his eyes and the shake in his parted lips. All she could do was think back to when he'd been the Beast, to the moment she'd thought him dead, to the way she'd felt love for him straight to her bones.

"Your Grace," she heard Père Robert say then. "Mademoiselle Belle. Are you both prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor one another as long as you both shall live?"

"I am," Adam answered immediately, and Belle nodded, ripping her gaze over to Père Robert as she assented,

"I am."

"Join your right hands to declare your consent," requested Père Robert, a knowing smile on his face. Belle took her prince's hand, remembering suddenly what his enormous clawed paw had felt like around her hand the first time they'd danced. He was warm and human now, and she squeezed his hand a bit as Père Robert said, "Repeat after me, if you will. _I, Prince Adam of Vendôme, take you, Belle, as my lawful wife…"_

Adam seemed utterly overwhelmed, tears suddenly coming up in his pale blue eyes. He gulped and sounded a bit weak as he repeated Père Robert's words. He finished off his own declaration of consent, and then it was Belle's turn. She found herself using her left hand to keep her own tears from falling as she repeated,

"I, Belle, take you, Prince Adam of Vendôme, as my lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

She flicked her eyes from Adam to her father, who now had tears streaming readily down his cheeks. Maurice looked so tired, and he coughed loudly for a long moment that made Belle's chest ache with worry. When at last the coughing subsided, Père Robert continued,

"May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God who joined together our first parents in paradise, strength and bless in Christ the consent you have declared before the Church, so that what God joins together, no one may put asunder."

"Thanks be to God," Belle murmured, turning her attention back to her prince. She squeezed his hand more tightly than ever and smiled weakly at him as Monsieur Le Blanc played a celebratory flourish on the harpsichord.

"Have you the coins for the arras, Your Grace?" asked Père Robert delicately. They had no wedding rings, owing to the last-minute nature of this wedding, so the coins as arras would do just fine. Adam pulled a few coins from the little pouch at the waist of his breeches, and Père Robert said softly, "Repeat after me if you will, Your Grace. _Belle, receive these arras as a pledge of our blessing and a sign of the good gifts we will share._"

Adam repeated the words and passed the coins into Belle's hand. He shut her fingers around them and smiled a little, and Belle repeated the words as she gave the coins back. Adam was about to tuck the money away again, but he hesitated and held the coins out to Père Robert.

"Take them, Father, will you? For the church? I owe a great deal more in back payments, I should think."

"Your Grace." Père Robert grinned and took the coins, putting them in the pocket of his lace-edged surplice. He folded his hands and said solemnly, "May the Lord bless and keep you both, loyal and devoted in the covenant of your Marriage, as long as you both shall live. Go in celebration. Thanks be to God."

"Thanks be to God," Adam repeated, and then he seized Belle's face in his hands and kissed her for all he was worth. She squealed quietly against his sudden boldness, and she heard Père Robert and her father and Monsieur Le Blanc all chuckling. When at last Adam pulled away, he whispered onto Belle's mouth,

"My wife."

* * *

Saying goodbye to her father had been one of the most difficult things Belle had ever done. She'd begged and pleaded with him to come back and live at the castle, but he'd refused adamantly. She'd given him the rose from her bouquet, and he'd stared at it for a long moment before raising his eyes to Belle and asking her to remind him what her name was.

That had been too much, and Adam had convinced Belle to kiss her father's cheek and tell him that she loved him and come out to the carriage. Now they rode on the drying roads, their carriage clattering more quickly back to the castle than it had come. Earlier today, Belle had had no idea that the wedding would occur. Now, as the sun set against the hilly horizon, she thought about how she was a married woman. And she thought of her father, and that made her tear up for what felt like the fiftieth time today.

"Thank you," she murmured, staring out the open window at the passing forest. "Thank you for marrying me during a moment of clarity. If we'd waited any longer, he wouldn't have had any idea what was happening. At least… at least when he walked me down the aisle, he knew who I was. He knew that he loved his daughter. He knew what he was witnessing."

"That's all that matters," her prince insisted quietly. He reached across the carriage and took Belle's hand, and she stared for a moment at their linked fingers. She felt a strange quiver in her chest, an anxious shudder of anticipation as she realized what usually came after a wedding. As if he'd read her mind, Adam said in a nervous murmur,

"Belle, there are things that a husband and wife do… those _things_ you said you wouldn't do with me when I was the Beast. But you don't have to do them now, either. You understand?"

Belle raised her gaze and studied his widened, bright blue eyes. "Yes," she said firmly. "I understand. And I would be very happy if you came to my room tonight, husband."

He smirked and nodded. "That sounds like an excellent plan," he said. "But for now, there's at least an hour back to the castle, and I think I'll spend it staring at my wife."

* * *

Prince Adam found himself with his fist hovering near Belle's door for the second time in just a few days. This time, he was doing so as her husband. He remembered very vividly banging roughly on her door with his enormous paw as the Beast. Eat with me or starve, he'd threatened her. That had not been very long ago, but it seemed a world away. Now he gulped heavily, realizing that the last time he'd had a woman's body, he'd been a greedy little fool. This was the first time in his long and often miserable life that Adam would perform this deed as an honorable man.

And so he hesitated, because Belle was beautiful and pure and everything right with the world. She was his everything; she was the force that had redeemed him and the force that kept him going even now. He feared very much the idea of plundering her, worried that his baser instincts might take over and hurt her. He shut his eyes, resolved to be human, and knocked.

The door opened almost instantly, as though Belle had been standing there waiting for him. Perhaps she had been. She wore a simple white nightgown that billowed a bit in the breeze from her open window. The prince studied his wife from head to toe and back up to her eyes, thinking she was too beautiful to be real.

"May I come in?" he asked, sounding far more uncertain than he'd intended. Belle stepped aside and opened the door wider, and when he came into her room, she shut the door behind him. He could sense fear on her, radiating like a scent from her skin. She would never admit to it, he knew. He gulped and turned to her. "Belle, just because you've married me doesn't mean you have to -"

"I want to," she whispered. Then, without any warning whatsoever, she peeled her nightgown up and off and tossed it aside, shivering visibly despite the warm night air. She covered her breasts and her sex on instinct, but then she revealed herself to Adam, tipping her chin up almost defiantly.

He felt his mouth fall open in shock at how alluring she was. Her waist was narrow, with a gentle curve to her hips and her slender legs. Her breasts were small but shapely. Her skin was milk white in the dim light of the candle sconces. Adam leaned against the stone wall with one hand, feeling utterly overcome by her.

"Belle," he murmured, reaching out with his free hand and daring to let his fingers curl around her waist. He grunted quietly, and Belle stared bravely up at him as she said,

"Perhaps it would be better if you took your clothes off, too."

"All right." He reluctantly took his hand from her skin and untied the belt of his banyan, letting it fall to the ground as he peeled off his own nightshirt. He was abruptly self-conscious of his body, more so than he'd ever been as the Beast. He suddenly longed for concealing fur and dehumanizing horns. He was terrified of his nakedness, frightened that she would find him insufficient. But Belle's breath trembled through her lips as she touched her fingers to the sparse blond hair on Adam's chest, and she whispered,

"You're more handsome than I'd imagined possible."

He scoffed, rolling his eyes a little and answering her, "And here I thought you had a powerful imagination. You must have thought I had scales if you think _this _is -"

She silenced him by snaring her hands in his loose hair and pulling him down to kiss her. Adam groaned against her mouth, his hands running up and down her arms and over her back as he tasted her. Her lips were sweet and her tongue was urgent, and her own hands tightened in his hair. The prince snarled wildly at the feel of her fingers pulling gently, and suddenly his hands were grasping and clutching at her. There was a vivid white flash of animalistic need in his mind, and all of a sudden he didn't feel human at all.

He was only distantly aware of the way he shoved her to the bed, the way he wrenched her up onto the blue and gold coverlet. His mind reeled as his mouth tore from hers and his lips clamped onto one of her breasts. He heard her cry out, felt her yanking on his hair, and he roared onto her skin with all the power he possessed.

"Please," he heard her whimper, and something in the back of his head shrieked at him that she was in pain. Adam snapped back to reality and staggered backward, away from her, and was shocked when he saw tears streaming down her perfect cheeks. She was rubbing at the shoulders he'd squeezed with entirely too much force. She was shaking; she was afraid of him. Adam tried to speak, tried to tell her he was sorry, but she shook her head and said quietly,

"It's all right. You didn't… I know you would never hurt me on purpose. Please, Adam. Just try to be gentle. Be a _man_ with me now."

"You're too brave for your own good," he informed her, shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair. "No. You should never have married me; you should never do _this_ with me. I'm still that creature, Belle, and I will not hurt you."

"No, you won't," she agreed. She moved to her knees, crawled to the edge of the bed, and reached for his hand. She guided his fingers to her breast, showing him how to caress her carefully. He sighed when she pulled him thumb over her hardening nipple, and his cock twitched between his legs. Belle nodded. "Gently. Like that."

Adam made his way up onto the bed with her, thinking that perhaps if he lay on his back, there was less potential for him to hurt her. He leaned back against the pillows and asked carefully,

"Will you sit atop me the way you did in the carriage?"

Belle smirked. "Yes. That was rather an impulsive move; sorry. I wanted you then. I want you now."

Adam could hardly breathe then, for she moved to straddle him with his manhood pressed against her front. She stared down at him and let out a shaking breath, pressing him against her sensitive nub and grinding her hips a little. Adam grunted and bucked his hips up, but Belle shushed him and pushed gently on his hips with hers. She ground against him once more, gasping as her fingers drove up and around his tip.

"Belle," Adam whispered frantically, marveling at the way her cheeks had flushed pink. The blush spread down her neck and over her heaving chest as she rubbed herself along his shaft. It felt good. Too good. So good that the prince suspected he was about to spill himself up onto her stomach. He wrenched her hands off of him and pushed her hips back a little, panting, "If you keep doing that, there won't actually be any consummation, Belle."

She laughed softly and murmured a little apology. She took his hand from her hip and put it between her legs. She encouraged him to draw little circles on her with his thumb, to stroke her wet velvet folds with his fingertips. She felt like silk, warm and inviting, and Adam was dizzy with want as he touched her. Within a moment, she'd fallen forward onto her hands and was pressing her lips to his, whispering something unintelligible and then letting out a desperate moan. Her body clenched erratically around Adam's fingers, and he tried to find air as the force of her climax hit them both. Somehow she managed to sit back up, her hair falling in messy tendrils and her face still flushed scarlet. She looked nervous as she took Adam's cock in her hand and lined it up with her body.

"The women in the village always said it hurts the first time," she mumbled, "but if there isn't a first time, there can't be a second or a third or a fourth time. I won't complain, all right?"

"Belle." Adam put his hand to her jaw and pulled her down for a kiss. He felt his stomach coil with nervous anticipation as he instructed her, "Move slowly. For both our sakes."

"All right." She touched her cheek to his, and there was a sudden warm tightness around his length as she sank down. She hissed through gritted teeth, her breath warm against Adam's ear as she whispered, "Oh, oh, _oh_."

He stroked her ribcage and her back, trying to soothe her with his hands even as his own body screamed at him. It took everything he had not to shove her onto her hands and knees and buck himself wildly into her from behind. It took every morsel of self-control he possessed to just lie there and let her move. But she did move, carefully and slowly, her hips unsteady as she pumped herself up and down.

"Does it feel good?" she asked him, her voice tight with the pain she was masking. Adam nodded silently, unable to find his voice through it all. It did feel magnificent; she was soft and wet and warm and tight. He lost himself entirely to her, to the way she started to move more smoothly. Her breath quickened against his skin, and her voice started to hum little sounds that seemed rather like she was enjoying herself. She sat up, pressing her hands to Adam's sweat-slicked chest, and she whimpered, "Oh, it feels too good. I'm going to… you know… again…"

"Yes." Adam's hands tightened around her waist, and he dared to help her move more quickly, thinking she must be getting tired. He felt her go tense, watched her arch her back so that her breasts were thrust forth in all their glory. Her hair tumbled back over her shoulders as her head lolled to the side, and as she came again, her hands braced themselves on Adam's arms.

It was too much. She was too good, too beautiful, too delicious. They'd agreed they weren't yet ready for children, and he didn't mean to do that to her on their first married night, anyway. Adam yanked her off of him, shoving her away far more viciously than he'd meant to do. He tried to apologize but couldn't; he was too busy gripping his length in his fist and finishing all over himself. He heard his own voice growl ferociously, his roar loud enough that surely the entire castle heard him. When the hot burst of pleasure had subsided, Adam turned his head and tried to find enough breath to speak.

"Are you all right?" he finally asked, and Belle nodded mutely from where she knelt. She made her way off the bed, walking as though she were a little sore, and she went to her wash stand. There was a quiet splashing as she wet and wrung out a cloth, and when she came back to the bed, she warned Adam,

"It's a little cold. Sorry."

She started to clean him, wiping the cloth over both their hands and then over his softened cock and the surrounding skin. The prince stared up at his brave little wife, reaching with his dry hand for her cheek as he murmured in wonder,

"I don't come close to deserving you."

She smirked and shook her head, taking the soiled cloth over to her laundry basket. As the two of them settled beneath the blue and gold coverlet, she mused,

"You're so much kinder to me than any other husband I might have had."

Adam chewed his bottom lip, remembering the time he'd caught her in the West Wing… that was the night she'd run away, the night he'd been injured rescuing her from the wolves. He remembered the feeling in his chest as she'd ridden away in her yellow gown - the feeling that something had shattered, that his soul had left with her. He must have been staring for quite a while, because Belle finally asked,

"Is something wrong?"

"No." He shook his head and promised her, "Everything is right."

"Will you stay the night?" she asked him, settling down on the pillows and putting her hand flat on his chest. He covered her hand with his, thinking there was no one in all the world that had ever been as fortunate as he was just now.

"I'll stay in this bed as many nights as you'll have me," he told her, and Belle grinned up at him.

"Forever, then."

He brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them gently. "Forever."

"Would you like me to distract you?"

Belle looked up from the thread she was picking on her pale pink dress and nodded. "Yes, please."

She and her prince were riding in a carriage to her village, having determined from Père Robert's letters that a visit to Maurice was in order. Belle was anxious, afraid that the father she would see would not be the man who had raised her. Adam reached across the carriage and picked up the heavy tome beside Belle.

"Let's see what you brought with you from the library, eh? Ah. Livy's history of the Romans. That's an… intriguing choice."

Belle laughed a little despite herself. She cocked up an eyebrow and said, "I had to search high and low for it. I'd expected to find it in French-language books about antiquity, but instead found it lost among some German theological texts."

"Oh. Well, you probably have me to thank for that, I'm afraid," the prince said, wincing a little. He opened the book and dragged his fingers over the pages. "I was forced to read this by my Classics tutor at fourteen, and I think I rather petulantly filed it incorrectly afterwards. What makes you want to read Livy's take on his own people?"

"Well, I've just finished Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_," Belle said, "and I felt I didn't know enough about Rome itself. Only one of us received an expensive education, you know."

"You may not have had elite teachers, Belle, but you're far more intelligent than I could ever hope to be." Adam shut the book and handed it back to her. "So. What part of it are you reading now? I noticed you stayed up very late last night with a candle reading."

Belle smirked and mumbled, "Sorry about that. I've been reading about the Second Punic War."

"Hannibal," her prince nodded, and Belle held the book to her chest as she said dreamily,

"I can almost feel the hooves of Scipio Africanus' cavalry on the Plains of Zama. I can almost feel the burn of the desert sun, the whip of the sand in the wind as the swords clanged together."

Adam shook his head and narrowed his eyes. "What I wouldn't give to possess the beautiful imagination in your head."

Belle laughed again and set the book down. She let her face go a little more serious then as she noted, "You're one of the very, very few people in my life who have not mocked my mind."

"I know what it feels like to be loved, in spite of defying every expectation," Adam noted. "It is a powerful feeling indeed."

Belle reached for his hand, dragging her thumb around his cuticles and noting, "I was very afraid of your claws. Afraid you'd rip me to shreds."

"I wouldn't have done that," Adam said firmly, but Belle rolled her eyes and reminded him,

"You did it to curtains and paintings and your own clothes. You roared at me as if you were a lion. Why wouldn't I have been afraid of those claws? But I grew less afraid of them, and eventually I got downright used to them."

"My regular old fingernails must seem positively pedestrian," her prince mused, and Belle smiled as she shook her head.

"You're the same on the inside, no matter what you use to scratch," she said. "We're almost there. Tell me something else distracting; my heart is starting to race."

"Madame de Garderobe informed me this morning that the design for your gown is finished," Adam said. "She was convinced I would be extremely interested in this information."

"My gown," Belle repeated, frowning. "You mean… for the party to celebrate the marriage?"

Adam shifted a bit where he sat and asked, "How does a month from Saturday work for you?"

"I think I'm busy that day," Belle joked, and Adam let out a little snarl of delight as he noted,

"All those little painted fools will cry right over their makeup when they discover they do indeed have a new princess."

"Ugh." Belle pulled a face and shook her head. "I don't want to be a princess."

"Then you'd best un-marry the prince," Adam informed her, quirking up half his mouth. But he squeezed her hand and assured her, "I haven't exactly been in touch with my royal extended family all these many years. I don't think there's anyone who will be banging down the door of my castle insisting that my wife refer to herself a princess. It can simply be Madame Belle, if you wish."

She nodded, peering out the window as the carriage rattled its way into Villeneuve. Her stomach flopped again, and Belle found herself picking once more at the thread on her skirt. Adam took both her hands in his and didn't let her go until they'd reached the church building. She let the coachman help her down, if only because she had on rather voluminous skirts today. Adam followed her, and curious eyes from all around the square gazed at their prince and his new wife. Belle ignored everything around her, heading straight for the church building with Adam beside her.

"What if he's already gone?" she whispered, and the prince replied in a low voice,

"Then he would already be at peace."

Belle climbed the stairs and crossed herself at the entry to the sanctuary, her heels clacking on the marble floors as she went up the aisle and turned toward the rectory. She knocked carefully on Père Robert's closed door, but there was no answer. She frowned, turning over her shoulder to face Adam. She opened her mouth to speak, but then the voice of the kindly priest said from behind her,

"Madame Belle. Your Grace." Belle turned back around, and Père Robert said gravely, "Monsieur Maurice and I were just taking our midday meal in the sunny dining-room back here. Please, do join us. But be warned - his confusion is immense."

Belle found her feet rather unable to follow Père Robert all of a sudden. She let Adam take her hand in his and lead her down the narrow, dark corridor. They turned a corner and entered the dining-room with its large windows. Sitting at a table was Belle's father, but he did not look up when they entered the room.

"Papa?" Belle said softly. Still Maurice did not look up; he continued eating the pot-au-feu before him. Belle released Adam's hand and pulled out a chair at the table opposite her father. He looked up at last from his food and set down his spoon with a clang. His eyes narrowed, and he asked in an angry voice,

"Is this the woman who wants to drag me off to prison? Who wants to take me prisoner? No. No, Father, get her away. I don't want her here."

Belle recoiled a little, blinking quickly as she insisted,

"Papa, it's me. It's Belle. _Your_ Belle, who always asked for a rose."

"A rose. Hmph." Maurice spooned food into his mouth, spilling it down his front. He coughed raucously then, bringing a blood-spattered napkin to his lips. He coughed for such a long while that he began to wheeze, and Père Robert came over to clap him hard between his shoulder blades. When Maurice looked up again, his eyes flashed with recognition, and he said in a warm voice hoarse from coughing, "Belle. My dearest. How have you been since your beautiful wedding day?"

Belle's eyes seared with tears, but she nodded and tried to keep her voice steady. "I have been well, Papa. Adam is a good husband."

"Adam. Who's Adam?" Maurice looked around the room, his eyes settling on the prince who stood beside his daughter. "You. Are you Adam?"

"I am, Monsieur." He reached down to put his hand on Belle's shoulder, and Maurice snarled,

"Take your hand off my daughter, you rogue blackguard! Just who do you suppose you are? Hmm?" He began eating his stew again, and Belle looked to the priest and the prince as she insisted,

"We need to take him back to the castle with us."

"Castle? No! _No!_" Maurice flew to his feet, swiping angrily at his stew. The crockery bowl flew against the wall and broke, and broth and vegetables and meat flew everywhere. Belle gasped in horror as Père Robert gently put a hand to Maurice's back and murmured,

"Monsieur Maurice, no one will force you to go anywhere or do anything. Be at peace, my dear friend."

_Peace_. Belle's breath shook as she told Père Robert, "We have to ask Agathe to help him. She said she would take away his pain, that she would make his agony dissolve like smoke. We have to get her to help him."

She pulled herself up from her chair, and Adam said softly from beside her, "Belle, unless you intend on dragging your father kicking and screaming and frightened away from his home village, I do not think he will come back to the castle. We have a trunk of clothing and supplies; we should stay in the house until…"

_Until he dies._ That was what he meant. As Maurice dissolved into another coughing fit, sending blood into his napkin, Belle knew that day was very near. She turned to Adam and said disbelievingly,

"Would a prince really stay in a house like that to be so near a dying man?"

"Do you think I would not?" he replied. He put one hand on Belle's cheek and insisted, "I love you, Belle. Richer or poorer. Sickness and health. The whole lot of it."

Belle covered her hand with his, trying not to listen to the terrible gravelly sound of her father's hacking. She tried to ignore the way he'd started raving at Père Robert about the roses in the garden dying, about the fact that his daughter was supposed to come and see him. Belle shut her eyes and turned round at last.

"Monsieur Maurice," she said finally, and her father panted breathlessly as he turned to her with blood-speckled lips. Belle's hands and lips shook as she asked, "How about Père Robert and I help you into bed? It seems you might benefit from just a little rest."

"A little rest," Maurice nodded. "Yes. That sounds fine."

"_Belle…" The Beast put an enormous paw on her waist, and she snuggled her face against the fur on his chest. She breathed in the heady, musky scent of him, felt the heaving of his great lungs as his breath quickened, and she reached between them to brush her fingers over his breeches. He snarled and then growled as he bucked his hips hard against her abdomen, crushing her against the wall with the lump between his legs. His paws pinned her wrists against the plaster, and suddenly she could hardly breathe from the weight and breadth of him. She'd never felt more alive, but -_

Belle jolted awake, sitting straight up in the straw-and-wool mattress where she'd passed the nights for many years. She swiped cold sweat from her forehead, turning her face in the gray light of early morning to see Adam stirring on the narrow bed.

"What's wrong?" he demanded gruffly, not opening his eyes.

"Nothing," Belle lied, and there must have been enough wobble in her voice to worry him, for her prince turned toward her on the peasant mattress. He sat up slowly, his brows furrowed with concern as he stared at Belle with bleary eyes."

"What's wrong?" he askedagain, more gently this time. Belle covered her hand with his, feeling the human skin he possessed now, and she admitted,

"I had a dream about you… the way you looked before."

"You had a dream about the Beast," Adam said knowingly. "Who did I kill? Who did I tear apart? Or who killed me?"

"No. It wasn't that sort of dream," Belle said. She shut her eyes, feeling her cheeks go hot with embarrassment as Adam let out a low, rumbling laugh.

"Was it _that_ sort of dream?" he asked, his fingers grazing down Belle's neck and over her collarbone. She just nodded, feeling her skin tingle beneath his touch. She was bleeding, so it wasn't as if she could receive his body properly right now, but she came alive for him just the same. She opened her eyes and smirked, running her fingers through his thick blond hair and over the beard that was really growing in now.

"You were enormous," she informed him, and when he chuckled, she added in a lustful voice, "Heavy. Tall. Completely overwhelming me."

"Is that what you want, Belle?" he asked, tipping his head. "Do you want to be overwhelmed?" His hand wriggled beneath the hem of her nightgown and started trailing up her leg. Belle pulled his fingers from her skin and said carefully,

"Bad time of the month, I'm afraid."

"Ah." He seemed unaffected, smiling a little as he promised her, "Some other time then, Madame. I'll overwhelm you."

Belle was dizzy at that, and it took everything she had to swallow hard and say, "Sun's coming up. There are chores to be done. I don't suppose you've ever actually done any real chores."

"Not really," Adam admitted, sounding game as he added, "I'm willing to start today."

Belle wondered what she could trust him to do without mucking it up. She glanced toward the tiny kitchen where she'd often prepared meals for herself and her father. "There's almost nothing in the cupboard," she said. "We could use a jar of honey and some bread… some cheese, a bit of wine. The chickens need feeding. The parsley in the garden is overgrown and needs pruning. And then, once all of that is done, we can visit my father at the church."

"Sounds marvelous," Adam said, though of course Belle knew he was lying. She patted his hand and pulled herself up from the mattress, which was covered in plain but cozy quilts and bolstered by a simple wood-and-twine frame. She was acutely aware that her husband was watching her dress, that he was gazing at her as she pulled on her linen blouse and her single petticoat and simple calico skirt and bodice. She knew he was watching her as she tied her apron around her waist and pulled her hair back with a ribbon.

"You know," she said, looking at herself in the tarnished mirror on the wall, "these chores will get done much faster if we're both dressed."

"Sorry." The prince pulled himself from Belle's simple bed and moved to the trunk they'd brought. "You're a bit beautiful is all."

She quirked up half her mouth and left him to relieve himself and dress as she went outside. She tossed a few handfuls of feed to the chickens and walked briskly down the steps, kneeling on the damp black earth and pruning the parsley. As she pulled some of the withered leaves away, she tucked the fresh bits into the pocket of her apron. She worked at the tomatoes for a few minutes and then pulled up a head of cabbage. She walked back into the house and jolted to a stop in the doorway.

She stood there like an idiot, a cabbage in one hand and four tomatoes on a vine in the other, parsley sticking out of her apron pocket. She'd never felt like more of a peasant girl than now, with her actual prince of a husband standing dressed before her. His breeches and coat were an elegant dark green with golden embroidery, and his stockings were the purest white. His black shoes and the brass buckles were polished and gleaming, and fine white lace stuck out from his sleeves. He stared at her for what felt like an eternity until Belle kicked the door shut behind her and said briskly,

"A few vegetables so I can make up a stew later. There are potatoes still good in the cupboard. We'll need that bread and honey and cheese, though."

Adam walked over to her and took the cabbage from her left hand, putting in the wrong cupboard in the little kitchen. Belle said nothing as she moved it to be with the other greens, and her prince murmured,

"I'm useless. Sorry."

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Useless," she repeated.

"Hardly. Let's go; the baker's best loaves go early."

* * *

"Good morning, Monsieur Moreau," Belle said, and Adam watched as she pulled out a few small coins from her pocket. "May I have a small wheel of Raclette?"

The cheese-maker rummaged around in his cart and pulled up a heavy wheel of cheese, which Adam stepped in to take. Monsieur Moreau seemed to notice Adam for the first time, and as he mutely took the coins from Belle, he took his tricorn hat off and put it to his chest. He descended into a bow and stammered,

"G-good morning, Your Grace."

"Good morning, Monsieur Moreau," Adam said plainly. "Thank you for the cheese."

The other man rifled in his pocket for coins to make change for Belle, but she insisted in a warm voice, "Keep it, Monsieur Moreau. Your cheese is the finest we could dream of in a small place like this. Thank you for your work."

"A very fine day to you, Mademoiselle Belle," Moreau said, putting his hat back on his head.

"It is _Madame_, actually," Adam corrected him, and Moreau's eyes flicked curiously back and forth between the two of them. As Belle and Adam walked away, she sighed,

"Well, everyone will know we're married by the end of the morning, then."

"Is that a bad thing?" Adam demanded, balancing the cheese and honey and bread in his arms. Belle shook her head but shrugged.

"It's not a bad thing," she said, "but it's always amazed me how very quickly word makes its way around Villeneuve. Oh, for heaven's sake."

She snatched the bread and honey from Adam's arms, for they had been about to fall. He scowled and informed her,

"I'm unaccustomed to having such small, thin arms. Very unhelpful for carrying."

Belle snorted a little laugh and kept walking back toward the house. Adam thought she looked prettier than ever like this, with the morning sun on her skin and her hair blowing back in the breeze. She always talked about how much she despised this little village, but he knew it was her home. It would always be her home, even after Maurice had gone.

"Will you take these things into the kitchen?" Belle asked as they walked through the front garden. She shook her head disapprovingly and said, "If I don't pull up some more of these cabbages, we'll get rot and pests."

Adam silently took the bread and honey, climbing the stairs and wondering what would happen to this place after Maurice died. Surely Belle didn't mean to come out here just to care for it; the garden would wither and die with her father. Perhaps, Adam thought as he put the food away in the weathered cupboards, they could donate the house to Père Robert as a measure of thanks. The priest could find some good and charitable use for it, Adam reckoned.

He was lost in his reverie when Belle came dashing back through the door. Her arms were empty, and in her eyes Adam could tell at once that something was very wrong. She slammed the door shut behind her and made her way quickly over to him, leaning her head on his chest and sounding stunned as she said,

"Agathe just came by the garden."

"Agathe," Adam repeated, pulling her back by her shoulders. "The enchantress?"

Belle nodded and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "She told me that it's time for her to… to take away my father's pain. She's on her way to the church now."

"Belle, what are you talking about?" Adam's heart raced as he demanded, "Is she going to kill your father?"

"No." Belle shut her eyes, seeming abruptly at peace as she whispered strangely, "_Long and happy will your years with him be._"

"Belle." Adam shook her shoulders a little to jolt her to rights, and he insisted, "We need to go to the church. Now. Come. Let's go."

She seemed dreamy and distracted as she walked with him up the cobblestoned hill that led to the church. Both of them ignored the stares and whispers of the villagers upon sight of their prince and his wife. Adam couldn't care about his own novelty just now. Maurice was dying. That was all that mattered.

Inside the church, Belle's boots and Adam's shoes were the only sound. Even when they entered the rectory, there was silence. Belle stood in the threshold of the little room where her father's low cot was, and she froze. Adam put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed a little when he saw what was happening inside the room.

Père Robert was seated in a chair beside the low bed, murmuring prayers in Latin as his fingers ran over the pearls of a beautiful rosary. Belle stepped slowly inside and sank to her knees beside the bed. Maurice was smiling blissfully up at the ceiling, his eyes glazed and his dry lips curled up as though he was watching something wonderful.

"Do you know, Belle," he whispered softly, "that I am going to see your beautiful mother again?"

"Yes, Papa." Belle reached for Maurice's hand and covered it with hers. "I know."

"I can not wait, Belle… to tell her what a magnificent woman her daughter became," Maurice said. His voice was hoarse, but his cough had gone. That was Agathe's work, Adam reckoned, along with the dreamy distance in Maurice's voice. Somehow the clarity of his memory had come back, if only for these very last moments.

From where he sat in the chair, Père Robert paused in his prayer and nodded in greeting to Adam. The priest took a sip of water from a cup beside him, clearing his throat as he started praying again. His eyes seemed very tired, and Adam wondered whether Père Robert had been at prayer for many hours now. That certainly seemed to be the case.

Maurice would be buried in the churchyard. That had been agreed upon by everyone involved. There would be no elaborate funeral, for in a moment of cognizance, Maurice had declared that he wanted no mourning or wailing at his gravesite. Belle would cry just the same, Adam knew. She would be changed forever.

"Belle," Maurice whispered, his voice fading. "My lovely little girl. My brilliant little girl. I love you so."

"Please don't go, Papa," Belle murmured, tears visibly tumbling from her eyes onto the blankets covering her father. Her back shook with her crying, and Adam wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in his arms and comfort her. But there was no comfort for something like this. Not now. That would come later. Right now, his only duty was to stand in the threshold and watch as Maurice's chest stopped moving, as his eyes went utterly blank. All he could do was brush away his own unsolicited tear as Belle collapsed down onto the low mattress, squeezing Maurice's lifeless hand and letting out a muffled wail of grief on the blankets.

Père Robert moved swiftly then to close Maurice's eyes, and now Adam knew his place was beside Belle. Still, all he could do was kneel and hold her while she cried, and when an hour had passed, he whispered into her ear,

"Shall we let him find his rest among the flowers now, Belle?"

She nodded, kissing Maurice's cold hand one last time and whispering through her sobbing, "Goodbye, Papa."

Adam wrapped an arm about her, suddenly wishing he was the warm and expansive creature he'd been. He wanted to carry her away from here, to daub away her pain the way Agathe had done for Maurice. But all he could do was ask Père Robert to send a messenger to fetch their carriage, not wanting to drag Belle back through the streets of the village.

* * *

"Well?" Madame de Garderobe pet the dog who had become a footstool under the curse. "What do you think?" She pursed her lips anxiously as Belle surveyed herself in the mirror before her. Suddenly Belle smiled, for the first time in the three weeks since her father had died. She and Adam had determined that a giant party for the general populace was inappropriate just now; they'd instead decided to hold a small gathering for the castle's inhabitants to celebrate the wedding. Still, Belle was nervous that the gown Madame de Garderobe had designed would be obscene and fluffy, and she wanted nothing of the sort just now.

"It's perfect," she said, and she meant it. The gown was black silk, with sleeves that reached her elbows and skirts that swished about her legs. A thick sash of deep red was tied around her waist and tied in a bow at the small of her back. Her hair tied in curls, with a blood-red silk rose nestled in her hair. Her shoes were black and low-heeled with little red bows on the top. It was all… "Perfect," Belle said again.

She did not feel _wrong_ wearing this, but she did feel beautiful. The last few weeks had consisted of a great many walks about the garden with Adam and alone. She'd spent her time reading, thinking of her father and her village and the life that lay ahead for her. She'd climbed endless stairs at night as though she was a ghost roaming the castle. Adam had wisely kept his hands off her all this time, knowing full well that her mind was on grief and not passion.

But this evening, for the first time since she'd said goodbye to her father, she felt a tiny twinge of positivity. This gown was beautiful. She was going to dance and dine and socialize with the only people who truly understood what the curse on the castle had meant. Belle turned her face to Madame de Garderobe and nodded.

"It's perfect," she said for the third time. "Thank you very much."

Madame de Garderobe's bright eyes shone a little, and she nodded as she said, "I'm-a gonna go get Cadenza ready. He-a so bad at dressing himself, you know? I see you at the little party, then."

"Will you be singing?" Belle asked behind her, and Madame de Garderobe grinned over her shoulder.

"But of course, my dear."

Belle smiled again, feeling momentarily guilty about doing so. But then she thought of her father and knew that he'd want her smiling. He absolutely would not want his only daughter wallowing in despair at his expense. Belle stood at the mirror for another moment, moving left and right and marveling at the fluid motion of her skirts. She laughed a little, and suddenly from beside her, a quiet voice said,

"I haven't heard that laugh in so long, I'd almost forgotten what it sounded like."

Belle whirled to face her prince, who was entering her room looking like an absolute vision of handsome grace. He was wearing black velvet, both his breeches and his coat, with silver thread weaving an intricate design around his front and his sleeves. The waistcoat beneath his coat was white silk, with red and black and silver embroidery. His blond hair had been curled at the sides and pulled tightly back with a black ribbon. Belle chewed her lip a little and said,

"Well. You look fantastic."

"Took the words right out of my mouth." Adam approached her and put his hands on her shoulders as he asked, "Are you certain you're up for this?"

"I am," she said honestly. She anxiously fingered the sash around her waist and said, "These past few weeks have been difficult. Sometimes I've felt like more of a shell than a fully alive person."

"Well, I know that sensation," Adam told her, "and I would never wish it on you. But it's only natural for you to mourn him."

"He wouldn't want me to cry tonight instead of having a pleasant evening," Belle said firmly. "He would want me to have a pleasant evening."

"I think you're very right about that," her prince told her. A look of concern came over his pale blue eyes then as he said, "You tell me the moment you need to escape."

"Oh." Belle reached up and stroked at his smooth beard. She marveled aloud, "How very kind you've been throughout all of this."

"I was, I think, especially unkind when you and I first met," Adam replied. "I'm only trying to be the husband you deserve, and I am probably still failing."

"No. You're not. Shall we head down to the ballroom?" Belle seized his arm and arranged it, putting her hand atop his. The two of them made their way down the stairs from Belle's East Wing quarters, and Adam declared,

"You're so beautiful that my eyes can hardly take it."

"Sorry to hurt your eyes," Belle joked, and Adam's cheeks went red.

"I didn't… that's not what I -"

"I _know_." Belle rolled her eyes and laughed again a bit. "Goodness. Something has you nervous. You've already proposed and married me; the hard bit's done."

"I just want you to feel happiness again. That's all," the prince told her. Belle squeezed his hand a little, flashing a smile to Cogsworth as they neared the ballroom. He pulled the door open for them, and Belle let Adam lead her inside.

The ballroom was ringing with the sound of Madame de Garderobe's voice and her husband's harpsichord playing. Chip was playing with Madame de Garderobe's dog in the corner, tossing a little rubber ball for the dog to go catch. Mrs. Potts shrieked at her son to scold him. Lumière and Plumette were the only ones dancing, and they clearly had eyes only for one another. Others milled about, talking and chewing on bites of food and sipping at Champagne.

"Oh, for goodness' sake," grumbled Cogsworth from behind them. He slammed his doorman's stick upon the ground and called loudly, "_Mesdames et Messieurs,_ may I present the lord and lady of the castle - the good Prince Adam of Vendôme and his wife, Madame Belle."

"Thank you, Cogsworth," Adam murmured over his shoulder, pulling Belle into the room a bit as everyone quieted. Dresses billowed out into curties and men dipped into low bows. Lumière guided Plumette off the dance floor, and Mrs. Potts put her hand onto Chip's shoulder.

Everyone smiled expectantly, and suddenly Belle understood.

"We're meant to dance alone, then?" she whispered, and Adam just smirked as he guided her to the dance floor. Cadenza began a lovely minuet, and Belle's heart thudded in her chest as she turned out to the assembled servants who had become more than just human. They had become friends. She dipped into a low curtsy, her black silk skirts flourishing about her as she did. Adam bowed to the people who had served him since he'd been a foolish young man. Then they turned toward one another and repeated the honors. Once they'd stood, Adam carefully took Belle's right hand in his left.

They made an elegant three-step sweep to the back of the dancing space, and then Adam wheeled Belle around so they were facing the same direction. They linked hands behind her back and again in the front, stepping forward in time with the music. They stepped out from one another, holding their right hands together and moving in a slow circle round each other. Belle's eyes locked onto Adam's, and she was suddenly hurled back to the night when she'd worn yellow, the night that she'd dared to share a dance with the Beast. This was the same man, she knew, but so very much had changed since then.

He whirled her up and around by her waist, feeling nearly as strong as he'd been before he'd been human again. His arm was tight and sure as he spun her around, letting her petal-like skirts flutter behind her. They turned slowly round each other again, this time holding their left hands, and the minuet ended. Belle curtsied once more to her husband, and again he bowed, and the room broke into enthusiastic applause.

Belle wanted to kiss him all of a sudden. She hadn't felt his mouth on hers in weeks. It had been all wrong to be physical with him when grieving her father. But tonight, it was starting to feel right again, even here in this ballroom. Belle stared at his eyes as he said quietly,

"Let's thank them all, shall we?"

She nodded and made her way to Lumière and Plumette, who declared that Belle was a vision in black. She received their congratulations and moved on to Mrs. Potts and her husband, the man Belle had always known as Monsieur Jean. Mrs. Potts drew Belle into a tight embrace the moment she walked up, and she said gently,

"It is right and good that you should wear black for the man who raised you, dearie," she said, "but it's also right and good that you should look beautiful doing it. You mourn him because you loved him, and children only love parents who live for them."

Belle couldn't speak then, overcome with her grief and her gratitude. She pulled back from Mrs. Potts and nodded, and she managed to croak out some thanks. The rest of the evening consisted of munching on expertly-prepared hors d'oeuvres, sipping endless Champagne, and dancing until Belle's feet hurt. By the time the night had reached its natural end, she found herself tipsy and more joyful than she would have thought possible. She and Adam bid everyone a thank you and a goodnight, and the two of them climbed the winding staircases back up to Belle's room.

Adam came inside with her and asked gently, "Would you like me to help you get undressed, or should I send up Plumette?"

"It'll be quicker if you just help me," Belle turned her back to her prince and felt his hands shaking a little on the buttons that ran down her back.

"He was there the day we married," Adam mused quietly. "He knew you at the end."

"Yes." Belle nodded, feeling Adam push her dress down over her shoulders. Once her arms were out of the sleeves, she pulled it up and over her head and laid it carefully over the back of a chair. She wriggled out of one petticoat and then another, and she asked Adam over her shoulder, "Would you untie the stays?"

His fingers were shaking again, she could tell. His breath was warm on her neck as he asked in a tight voice, "Did you enjoy yourself?"

"I did," Belle said honestly, pulling off her stays and the thin petticoat beneath. She reached down to untie her garters as she told Adam, "I think everyone needed that. Everyone needed to feel happy. My father would have been glad to see it. Thank you for arranging it, for being respectful of the way that -"

"Belle, I love you," he said very firmly, and Belle looked up at him as she rolled her silk stockings down.

"I know you do," she said. "And I love you more than you'll ever comprehend."

"Hmm." Adam seemed to be watching her as she put her stockings away, put her stays in their flat drawer, and finally he asked cautiously,

"Can I tell you something?"

Belle frowned as she turned to face him. "What's wrong?"

He approached her near the new, completely inanimate wardrobe, and he put her hands up to his chest. His face seemed terrified as he said,

"There is something I wish to do to you, but I'm afraid it's… well, it's probably too indecent to speak of it."

Belle's heart thumped at that, and her stomach twisted a little with anticipation. She threw up an eyebrow and demanded, "What is it?"

Adam's throat bobbed visibly, and he admitted, "I want to taste you."

"Taste me." Belle grinned crookedly and shook her head. "What do you mean?"

The prince's breath shook through his gritted teeth as he pushed the hem of Belle's chemise up. His trembling fingers went between her legs, making her gasp with surprise as he repeated, "I want to… _taste_ you."

"Oh." Belle moved her hands to the shoulders of his black velvet coat, overcome suddenly. She found the presence of mind to ask, "Is that… a thing that is done?"

"Yes. Sometimes. Though I admit to having no experience," Adam said. "Something inside of me has been aching for it all night. Please."

Belle forced a little smile and shrugged. "If that's what you want, husband, then that is what you shall have. Here." She peeled off her chemise and tossed it aside, realizing she was utterly naked and he was still completely clothed. She took his bearded cheeks in his hands and pulled him down as she requested, "At least kiss me first."

"Mmph. Yes." His lips were soft but still shaking, and he tasted like cream and wine. Belle breathed him in, took in the taste and the feel of him, and suddenly she was wet and warm between her legs. She was aware of his fingers returning there, pulsing gently in time with his kissing. Belle backed up toward the bed and finally broke the kiss so that she could clamber up onto the blue-and-gold coverlet. She leaned back against the pillows, deciding that if her husband had something so specific in mind, he could go ahead and make it play out himself. He surprised her by pushing her knees apart and arranging himself between her legs, his movements suddenly smooth and quick as if he knew exactly what to do.

"Are you very certain you've never done this?" she demanded, and Adam shook his head vigorously as he stared at her womanhood. He raised his vibrant blue eyes to her and said in a dangerous voice,

"I know what I want. That's all."

"Oh." That was an extremely erotic thing for him to have said, for some reason Belle couldn't quite place. She was more wet than ever now as he stared right at her and let his fingers drift around her womanhood. His voice was low and deep and rough as he told her,

"If I hurt you, tell me to stop. I don't want to hurt you. Quite the opposite."

Belle was breathless, her fingers cinching on a nearby pillow as she said in an uncharacteristically squeaky voice, "I'm sure it'll be fine."

Her eyes went round as saucers as he crouched down, putting a hand on each knee and kissing up the inside of Belle's thigh. She somehow resisted the urge to cry out, instead panting furiously for breath at the tickling, wonderful sensation. Then there was something warm and flat dragging in long strokes around the lips of her entrance, and Belle could stay silent no longer. She moaned helplessly, reaching for the ribbon that bound Adam's hair back. She combed her fingers through the tight curls at the sides of his head, letting his hair become a golden mane as she liked it to be.

He growled against her body, his voice vibrating in a way that made Belle's back arch. His hands clutched at her thighs, squeezing so hard that Belle suspected there would be marks. He'd moved to his stomach, and suddenly Belle realized he was grinding his own hips against the bed. His hands glided up and down Belle's legs in time with his own hips, and he was suddenly crushing his mouth hard against her. Belle yelped in surprise, tipping her head back and squeezing the pillows as everything came alive inside of her. He was suckling her nub between his lips, driving his tongue inside of her and lathing it around the outside. His hands had moved to her stomach and ribcage. His hips bucked downward, and seemingly out of nowhere, he tore his face away and roared.

It wasn't a little growl of passion like a normal man might make. This was a _roar_, properly animalistic, and Belle knew he'd found his own pleasure like this. He smashed his face downward, nuzzling his lips and his nose against her, and Belle couldn't take it anymore. Everything inside of her went tight as a violin string about to snap. She moved her hands to his hair, holding his head as he licked and snarled, and she let everything release. Her womanhood was snapping around his lips, she knew. Inside her body, it felt like gunpowder had exploded. Her ears were hot and ringing; her vision was bright and blurry. Her head spun for a moment, and when she finally came down from it all, she was panting and exhausted.

She stared open-mouthed at Adam as he pushed himself up to kneel. His lips were swollen and dewy and his pale eyes flashed with something predatory. He dragged the inside of his wrist over his lips and mumbled,

"There won't be any more than that, I'm afraid. Managed to… you know, finish in my breeches. Sorry."

"Oh, that was… more than enough." Belle blinked a few times and managed to tell him, "There's Marseille soap and fresh water at the basin."

"Thank you," he said, and she knew he wasn't talking about the soap. She cocked up an eyebrow and scoffed,

"Thank _you_."

An hour later, they were curled up in their shifts, tangled together but still not asleep. Belle planted a kiss at Adam's sternum and whispered,

"You were right about the house. We should donate it to Père Robert. Perhaps he can find some use for it. Or perhaps he and I could make it into a proper library, with books from the castle."

"Oh. I like that idea," Adam said, looking down at her and tucking her hair behind her ear. He nodded and said again, "I like that idea very much."

* * *

"Oh. Allo, Master. Did she call you in to 'elp, too?"

Adam turned round near the entrance to the library and gave Lumière a knowing nod. It was raining outside, but that certainly wouldn't deter Belle from continuing work on her project. She and Père Robert had corresponded and determined that Maurice's home would be converted into a village library. They would start with about a hundred books, they'd agreed, since the people of Villeneuve were not yet as book-addicted as Belle herself. They had plans to put comfortable furniture for reading inside the house, to accept donations that would go to Père Robert's charity work, and more. But Belle hadn't even started to curate the books for the library, so Adam suspected that was where his and Lumière's labor was going to come in.

Sure enough, when the prince and Lumière strode into the library, Belle called from a ladder, "Oh, there you both are!"

She scrambled down from the ladder, and Adam had to recoil from the instinct to shout at her to be careful. He ought to have been helping her more with this project over the last week, he thought. She was so passionate about it, but he'd found it difficult to get himself engrossed in it. After all, it was _her_ father's house, _her_ village priest. Only this morning at breakfast when Belle had rather crossly reminded him that she'd be using _his_ books had Adam realized how absent he'd been from what she needed.

Now Belle dashed to the table in the middle of the library and picked up three sheets of paper. "Right," she said matter-of-factly. "I've made book lists for different categories. We'll keep them all in stacks over there against the wall until we can lug them down to the cart outside, but that will need to be on a day with better weather. Lumière, I'm assuming you can read."

Lumière looked rather offended, touching his hand to his chest as he said, "Of course I can read, Madame. It's Mrs. Potts who's not the most literate. And my poor Plumette… eh… she can't read. Not at all. But me? I can read!"

Belle sighed and shot Adam a meaningful look. "Perhaps open reading lessons within the castle would be in order as part of this project."

He shrugged. "I… suppose I'd never thought about whether or not the castle's servants were literate."

Belle rolled her eyes. "No, I suppose that isn't something that would have concerned you much back then. No matter. We're all starting fresh. So… Lumière, your category is French literature."

"Fantastic!" Lumière took his list from Belle and nodded in approval. "Amadis of Gaul. Madeleine de Scudéry. Rousseau. Voltaire. Diderot. You 'ave excellent taste in French writers, Madame. You surely do. Off I go to collect them, then!"

Lumière made his way in the direction that Belle pointed him, taking a book basket over one arm as he went. Belle approached Adam and said seriously,

"I appreciate your help with this."

"I'm sorry I've not been more attentive. I know it's important to you," Adam said. He took the list that Belle handed him and smiled as his eyes scanned over the titles. "Shakespeare. I'm to collect the Shakespeare titles. Well… that's fitting, then."

She took her own list, which appeared to be historical readings, and Adam went off to the Shakespeare section. He didn't have to climb a ladder to get there, but he was socked with nostalgia as his eyes settled on the books. This was where he'd spent endless time as a youth, blind to the world outside his castle despite reading all about suffering and joy. This was where he and Belle had truly connected, where she'd smiled at him with adoration in his eyes for the first time. Adam gulped hard and glanced down to his list.

_Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet._

"Not that I mind sharing the contents of this library," Adam said, "but… are we going to have any Shakespeare left once we take these to the village?"

He turned over his shoulder to see Belle glaring at him from a ladder. "There are only ten titles on that list, and we have multiple copies of most of them," she said sharply. "Besides, we have many, many, many Shakespeare titles that I'll rotate in later. _Titus Andronicus. Coriolanus. All's Well That Ends Well. Henry VI. _Parts one and two!"

"All right, all right." Adam turned back to the shelves and began hunting around for the Shakespeare works on Belle's list. Behind him, he could hear Lumière announce,

"I 'ave all thirty of the French literature copies 'ere, Madame. Shall I move them over by the door?"

"Yes. Thank you, Lumière," Belle said gratefully. Adam picked up his stack of Shakespeare books and walked over to the place where Belle and Lumière were making neat, organized piles. He set the books down and knitted his hands before him as Belle said,

"Thank you for your help, Lumière. I'll let you know when we've got crates to load them into the cart, eh?"

"But of course! I aim to serve, Madame. Master. A good rainy afternoon to all, then!" Lumière bowed politely and made his way out of the library, leaving Belle and Adam alone. She looked up at him with a rather odd look, and he sighed and said quickly,

"I am sorry. I've been awful these last few days of foul weather, and… and that is hardly an excuse." He lowered his face to the parquet floor and finally admitted, to himself and to her, "It has been such a very small part of my life in which I've cared a lick about anyone else. I'm still far from an expert. I am trying, and I will try harder."

"It's all right," Belle said, but the prince's chest twisted uncomfortably in his chest. He shook his head and insisted,

"I'm still a monster, aren't I?"

Belle raised her eyes to him and shook her head. "No. You were never a monster. Not ever. You were a boy spoiled rotten by privilege you didn't even know you had. You were a young man who got everything he demanded. Then you were in an inhuman body for a while, and then a young woman fell in love with you. And you have proven that the core of your being is anything but a monster."

"I love you." He told her all the time, he knew, but he needed to tell her again and again. "I love you, Belle."

She kissed him, drawing herself up onto her toes and pressing her lips to his as she whispered, "You know, on second thought, I think I'd like to send _Titus Andronicus_ down to the village, too."

Adam smirked at her, sighing and shaking his head as he turned back to the bookshelves.

* * *

"I taxed the local people to pay for my parties. Now I want to make it the other way round. That will be my redemption, so to speak," Adam was saying. Belle shook her head in confusion, gripping the window well as the carriage hit a rather large bump. Adam clarified, "I want to host those exclusive parties for the wealthy regularly, but this time around, they'll pay to attend. We'll still have festivals and everything for the general public, mind, but this is fundraising."

"Fundraising," Belle repeated, and Adam's face went very serious as he looked out the window. They were on their way to Villeneuve, a cart full of books behind them. They were meant to meet with Père Robert and a few volunteers in the morning to firm up logistics for the new library. But in the meantime, the voyage to the town was taking longer than usual. The rain had stopped, but the roads hadn't quite dried out. Adam and Belle had been discussing their plans, and now his face and voice were grave.

"The nearest good hospital is in Poitiers," he noted. "There should be something closer. Between my own private funds and those raised by hosting pay-to-attend parties, we could build and sustain a small local hospital for a good long while."

Belle's stomach ached suddenly, and her eyes burned as she told her prince, "Just by _wanting_ to build a hospital, Adam, I think you have redeemed yourself." She sighed then and said aloud what had been bothering her since they'd left the castle. "Once we get to my father's house, I'll have to decide which of his belongings to keep, which to donate, and which to dispose of. That won't be easy."

"You don't have to decide any such thing," Adam insisted. "I'll send the cart back ten times if need be; there's plenty of room in the castle to store all of it forever. You don't have to get rid of anything that belonged to him."

Belle studied the sorrow in his pale blue eyes, feeling a surge of affection and something deeper than that. They'd only been together physically a few times since their marriage, owing to the difficult emotional circumstances and the uncertainty they both still possessed. Belle was anything but uncertain now, leaning across the carriage to put her hands on his neatly-trimmed blond beard. She brought his lips to hers and he groaned a little, his hands going to her waist. He pulled her toward him, and Belle moved swiftly to heave across the carriage. She straddled him, hiking up her wool and cotton skirts to make movement easier. Adam's hands tightened on her waist as she ground her hips down against him, and suddenly he ripped his mouth from hers.

"Entirely too much damned clothing involved in this situation," he said in a low growl. Belle giggled softly, brushing her knuckles over his hair as she reminded them both,

"We're in a carriage. I should go back to my own side now."

They stared at one another for a long moment, and it took every ounce of self-control and determination Belle had to finally pull herself off of her prince. As she settled back onto her own seat, he informed her slyly,

"One of these days, something very carnal is going to happen in this carriage, Belle. It's rather inevitable, I should think."

* * *

"Please don't drop that one! It's got all the Shakespeare!" Belle looked concerned as Adam lifted a hefty crate from the cart. He shot her a rather withering look and reminded her,

"I'm stronger than I look."

"Oh. Yes. Of course." Belle's cheeks went a little pink, and she loaded up her own arms with books. She followed Adam into the house, and outside, he could hear the coachman and the cart driver grunting as they unloaded their trunk full of clothes and supplies. Inside, Adam unloaded the crates of books that had been brought in, making neat piles and handing the empty crates back to Belle. She began filling them back up with her father's belongings, which were to be carefully transported back to the castle and put into safe storage.

"Canvases, brushes, paints…" She was delicate and loving as she put her father's art supplies into one crate. "Half-finished paintings. All of his drawings. He left so much behind, me most of all."

"I'm sorry, Belle," Adam said honestly. He remembered the day his own mother had died, the way a part of him had shattered when she'd taken her last breath. He sighed and said down to Belle, "I think he would be grateful for his house becoming a library."

"I think so, too," she said up to him with a tearful little smile. "Would you hand me that crate there that has straw in it? These things need padding."

Adam helped her use paper to wrap a few music boxes that her father had begun making prior to his death. He studied one, a painted clay apple that opened to reveal a dancing worm inside. The musical mechanics had not yet been added, so it was silent, but it was still very obviously clever. Adam handed it wordlessly to Belle, and she shook her head with a grin.

"Oh, Papa," she whispered. She picked up some paper and wrapped the apple carefully, putting it into the crate as she said, "I don't want to overload this one. Would you mind taking it out to the cart yourself? I'll keep working in here."

Adam bent to pick up the crate, and as he did, he kissed Belle's forehead. He carried the crate outside and down the stairs, skirting the chickens in the front garden to put the crate inside the cart. He carefully arranged some anchor stones around the crate and instructed the driver,

"Nothing goes on top of this one. It's very fragile."

"Oh, Your Grace! Fancy seeing you here!"

Adam looked up curiously to see a young woman with a towering gray wig giggling as she approached him. He frowned at her flirtatious nature; he'd known so many women like her in the days before the curse. As she tipped her painted face and giggled a little, Adam put his lips into a line and mumbled,

"Yes. Fancy seeing me at the childhood home of my wife. In any case, I hope you have a fine morning, Madame."

"It's _Mademoiselle,_ Your Grace," she corrected him, fanning herself with a faded and frayed silk fan she opened with a flourish. She gave a little curtsy and said, "Mademoiselle Faustine Coulmier."

"Pleased to meet you." Adam turned away, his mouth tasting sour as he remembered the nights he'd spent with simpering sycophantic women who wanted nothing more than money and attention from the prince. This Faustine woman didn't seem to be getting the plain picture of rejection; she hurried around the cart and asked quickly,

"May I ask, Your Grace, what brings you to Villeneuve today?"

He rolled his eyes and sighed as he turned to her. "My wife and I," he said very purposefully, "are converting her father's residence into a library. It will be stocked with books from the castle and will be administered by the church."

"A library?" Faustine repeated, giggling madly. "Oh, Your Grace. Belle's always been the only one around here with her nose stuck in a book's binding. No one in Villeneuve will be interested in her Plakespeare."

"It's _Shakespeare_," the prince said plainly.

"Oh. I'm sure you're right, Your Grace." Faustine Coulmier grinned, revealing uneven brown teeth, but that wasn't what made Adam shudder. Mercifully, Belle came outside then and tossed some feed to the chickens.

"Morning, Faustine," she said airily, and Faustine's grin vanished as she dipped into a curtsy again and murmured,

"Madame Belle."

"Very good to see you, Faustine. You've always been an intelligent woman; I'm certain you'll be a frequent patron of our little library, eh?" She turned to Adam and said in the same light voice, "All this work has me hungry. Shall we get lunch, husband?"

* * *

"Really? They couldn't paint over that?" Adam curled up a lip in disgust as he walked into the village's tavern and noted the _Gaston the Hunter_ mural. Belle winced and said,

"He's dead. Many people view that as a tribute to him now. I doubt you'll ever get them to paint over it." She led Adam to a little table. The fiddler and singer in the corner, as well as the smattering of other patrons, seemed intrigued by the arrival of the prince and his wife, but no one was dramatic in reacting. The innkeeper did rush over and give a nervous little bow as he asked,

"Welcome! What may I get you to eat and drink, Your Grace?"

Adam flashed Belle a little smile and said, "I'll let my wife decide. She knows this place far better than I do."

Belle smirked. "Just a pot-au-feu and a tankard of ale for each of us, please."

"Straight away, Madame. Your Grace." The innkeeper bowed again and scurried off. Adam gave Belle a knowing look and suggested,

"Not exactly the most gourmet cuisine here, eh?"

"No," she confirmed. "But I'm sure when we get back to the castle and whine to Lumière about all the peasant food, he'll ensure we're properly fed."

They both laughed a little at that, but then Adam's eyes made their way back to the painting of Gaston. Belle followed his gaze and sighed.

"When he shot me, it hurt worse than almost anything in my life had done. Only you leaving had hurt worse. Every gunshot meant an excruciating burning sensation ripping through me. My limbs went weak, the light faded, my ears rang…"

"Stop." Belle shook her head and stared at the wood on the table. "I saw it happen; I can't relive it."

"He called me _Beast_, right to my face. As if it were a name," Adam said quietly. "He told me you'd sent him. That you'd… sent him to kill me. For an instant, I did believe him."

"That isn't what happened at all," Belle insisted. "I used the mirror to try and free my father; I tried to convince them that -"

"I know." Adam nodded. "But for years, I'd wondered how the people would react if they knew what dwelled inside the castle. And Gaston showed me plainly the decrepit nature of most human souls."

"That isn't fair," Belle protested. "He was so much worse than anybody else, and he dragged others underwater. Ignorance and pliability aren't the same as active wickedness."

"He was wicked to you, too," Adam noted, and Belle waited for the musicians to start up another piece before she nodded, her brown eyes almost amused.

"Gaston had been pursuing me for several years. Every time I told him 'no,' he seemed to be egged on. I remember the first time he really and truly suggested I marry him, and he meant for me to do so quickly. He was talking about me bearing him children, and -"

"Oh, Belle. Please." Adam wrinkled his nose and shook his head vehemently, feeling nauseated by the thought of Belle procreating with the monster Gaston had been. Then an odd thought crossed his mind, and he asked carefully, "Are you disgusted by the idea of having children with me? Not now. Later. I mean, much later, but… does it disgust you to think of such a thing?"

"No." Belle paused then, for the innkeeper had brought their stew and ale. Belle passed the man a few coins and smiled her thanks, and once he'd gone, she said to Adam, "As long as I can manage not to misplace your children in the enormous castle, I'll be perfectly happy to have them someday."

Adam had to laugh at that, and suddenly the unhappy mood he'd developed upon seeing Gaston's painting dissolved. He and Belle ate and drank in peaceful silence for a while, until she noted,

"Plumette's been hinting rather strongly that she's with child."

Adam's eyebrowswent up. "With Lumière's child?"

"I would assume so," Belle giggled. Then a wicked little look crossed her gleaming brown eyes, and she asked, "Do you suppose the child will have wicks or feathers?"

Adam snortedu a laugh and turned his attention back to his tankard.

"Enough talk of babies and dead monsters," he declared, taking an enormous swig of ale. Belle laughed again, asking,

"Do you mean to get drunk in the middle of the day?"

"I mean to drink my ale," the prince teased. After all, if he was going to take a meal in a peasant tavern, he was going to do it correctly.


	4. Chapter 4

"And over here is the Shakespeare." Belle flashed a meaningful glance to Prince Adam, who winked back at her and made her cheeks flush hot. She turned her attention to Père Robert, who nodded and smiled as he looked around the house.

"It'll be a challenge to convince the villagers to take advantage of this resource," he admitted, "but it's invaluable, and we'll do our best."

They'd just come from a meeting at the church with the priest and four of the most studious boys from the school. Belle had also been elated to see Madeleine, the girl she'd been teaching to read before she'd left. The children would help administer the library, which made Belle's heart soar. She was proud and happy as she said,

"I think this little library will be my father's legacy, for it's him who impressed on me that reading was such a fine task to take up."

"May I ask, Madame Belle," Père Robert said delicately, "what you mean to do with the chickens and the garden?"

"Oh. Erm…" Belle shrugged and admitted, "I figured the plants would die without attention. The chickens will find new homes, I'm sure."

"Would it be possible… that is to say, would you consider allowing some volunteers from the church and myself to tend to the garden and the chickens?" asked Père Robert. "Those vegetables and eggs would go a long way in helping to feed the poorest among us."

"What a marvelous idea," Adam said from beside Belle, and she grinned as she nodded.

"Of course, Père Robert. It's all yours; I'm anxious for everything about this place to help others. But, speaking of feeding. I've got poulet au vin blanc ready to serve. Can I interest you in lunch?"

"I'd love to stay, Madame, and it does smell marvelous," said Père Robert, "but I've a Rosary to lead at the parish in fifteen minutes. I must bid you good day, and a safe and blessed journey back to the castle."

"Goodbye, Father," Adam said, and Belle gave Père Robert a warm smile as she shut and latched the door behind him. She huffed out a happy sigh and dragged her fingers over her hair. She flicked her eyes to her husband and said,

"How about you?' Can I interest _you_ in some poulet au vin blanc?"

"I'll get it," he insisted, gesturing to the table. "You did the cooking."

He was very unaccustomed to serving others, Belle knew, so she was more than willing to give him the opportunity now. She murmured her thanks as a wooden bowl of spooned-out chicken was placed before her. She smiled a little to herself as Adam used her battered old ladle to dole out food for himself. Her smile grew as he poured water from the jug into two simple tin cups. When he sat opposite her, giving her a curious look, he demanded,

"What? What is it?"

"Oh, nothing," Belle shrugged. "Interesting to see a prince serving up peasant food in a peasant house to a peasant girl. That's all."

"But you aren't a peasant girl anymore," he reminded her gently. He picked up his fork and knife and said, "You're a princess."

Belle rolled her eyes as she chewed her rich bite of food. Once she'd swallowed a gulp of water, she said, "Try convincing Faustine Coulmier of that."

"Faustine," Adam said in between bites. He took a sip of his own water and then swished it around slowly, narrowing his eyes. "She's an air-headed would-be interloper; _you're_ my wife. Who cares what she thinks? About anything. Does she actually think about anything...?"

Belle scoffed and warned him, "Now you're being cruel."

She ate in silence for a little while, but something niggled at the back of her mind. Faustine Coulmier had a more-than-ample bosom that spilled and heaved from her tightly bound stays. She had wide green eyes; she was taller and more shapely than Belle was. And Faustine had openly flirted with the prince the day before, last night at the tavern, this morning when they'd been on their way to the church… aristocratic men very often kept mistresses, Belle knew, but -

"Belle."

She glanced up, only then realizing that she'd been staring at her chicken with her hand shaking around her fork. Adam glanced at her hand and then back up to her eyes, tipping his face as he reminded her,

"_You _are my wife. And I don't care if it's cruel. That silly girl has nothing but wool between her ears. I promise you I had my fill of fools a long time ago. I've grown up; I've grown wiser. As a result of that process, I have fallen in love with you. Isn't that enough reassurance?"

Belle blinked a few times, suddenly feeling awful for being jealous and suspicious. "Yes," she said. "Of course it's enough. I'm sorry. I just want to leave this village and come back as infrequently as possible."

Adam set his own fork and knife down and posited, "I've been thinking… perhaps a trip to Italy would be in order."

"Italy," Belle breathed, feeling glee come over her. She nodded and said, "Verona. You'd take me to Verona."

"Verona, Rome, Florence, and Venice. That's what I was thinking. We'd be gone around six months. Would you like that?"

"Oh, yes." Belle nodded, feeling a sudden surge of emotion in her veins. "I would like that very much."

Adam drummed his fingers on the table and considered aloud, "Now that the curse is broken, my name is remembered. You would need to be all right with _being_ nobility on such a trip. Staying in fine hotels is one thing; you'd actually need to be a princess. Can you do that?"

"I can try," Belle shrugged. She looked around her father's cramped little house and murmured, "How funny for a little girl from a place like this to grow into the woman my path has created."

"It isn't funny," Adam argued. "It's beautiful, but not funny."

He rose from where he sat and held out one hand as he walked around the little table. Belle put her fingers in his and stood, suddenly very aware of her rough wool dress and her stained linen blouse. Adam put his hand to the small of her back and bent to kiss her, whispering,

"I will kiss you in the market square in Verona."

He put his lips to her neck, and Belle gasped with flaming desire as he licked and suckled. She felt herself go wet between her legs as he murmured onto her skin,

"I will kiss you in the shadow of the Colosseum."

His hands started to work up the hem of Belle's roughspun skirts, and his fingers made their way to the place where she was throbbing. His mouth moved around her throat, his lips pressing against the skin beneath her ear as he hummed,

"I will kiss you on the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno in Florence. And I will make you scream my name through a window opened over a canal in Venice."

Belle gasped at that. He shocked her then by whirling her around by the waist and pushing her down onto her straw-and-wool mattress. Belle glanced over her shoulder, a bit surprised but mostly aroused, and watched as Adam unbuttoned the placket of his breeches. He pulled himself out and stroked a few times as Belle checked to ensure the window shutters near the bed were closed.

"Let them hear for all I care," he said. "You're my wife."

"Oh, Adam." Belle's mind spun as he lowered himself onto the mattress, bringing her skirts up around her waist and pushing his hand into her open drawers. His thumb and fingers flicked and glided, and Belle couldn't help but collapse down onto her chest from her elbows.

"You dreamed one time of me as the Beast," he reminded her. "You said I was vast and heavy and you liked that."

"It was just a dream," Belle reminded him, but as he bent down and put his body flush against hers, she found herself moaning with delight. He was laying just enough of his weight against her that she felt it with each breath. She was pinned but not injured, trapped but enraptured. She felt him line himself up, felt him push himself into her, and she cried out against the pillow with a muffled keen of need. His fingers laced around her wrists and pushed them onto the mattress as he put a little more weight onto her. Belle turned her face to the side, taking the deepest breaths she could manage. His lips were at her ear then, asking in a frantic sort of whisper,

"Am I hurting you?"

"No," Belle said honestly, shaking her head and knowing her hair must be a certifiable mess. She couldn't care. His lips were on her neck again, his voice a low growl as his hips pushed against Belle. She came so quickly that it almost didn't seem real. It took hardly any of the grinding sensation at all before she was whirling into a powerful climax. He plunged into her through the heat of it, her ears ringing as she struggled to breathe through his weight.

Suddenly the heft of him had gone; he'd pulled himself up onto his knees and had released Belle's wrists. She turned over her shoulder, struggling to regain her breath, and watched as he snatched his handkerchief from his velvet coat. He balled it up and pulled out of her, his absence immediately striking her through. He pumped his hand on his slick length, and Belle watched as his member swelled up and then pumped his milky seed onto the handkerchief. She felt oddly aroused again, just seeing him finish like that, and she watched his blue eyes glaze over with satisfaction. He dragged his teeth over his lip and snarled quietly, his panting breath slowing and quieting as he set the handkerchief down and tucked himself back into his breeches. His voice was a bit hoarse as he said down to Belle,

"It's a month from here to Verona, even with a good set of horses. That's quite a lot of time to pass in a carriage. Surely you won't be devoted to spending all that time reading."

Belle smirked, grabbing a pillow from beside her and smacking him with it playfully. "You go from talking about kissing me in Rome to being filthy all the way there."

"Why not both?" he asked, tipping his head. Then he looked a little dizzy and noted, "Not sure it's advisable to do what I just did in a full velvet ensemble at the end of summer. I'm getting water. Some for you?"

"Yes, please," Belle nodded, sitting up on the bed and watching again as her prince poured water into the weathered tin cups.

* * *

"All right, ladies! Open your eyes!"

Mrs. Potts and Madame de Garderobe took their hands from their eyes and gasped. Plumette gestured grandly to Belle, who felt abruptly self-conscious as she twirled a little in her new gown.

"It's not too much?" she fretted, but Mrs. Potts said warmly,

"This is my favorite one yet, my poppet. Makes you look like a sunset. Doesn't it, Madame de Garderobe?"

The singer clutched at her dog, Frou-Frou, and declared, "It is one of the most beautiful gowns I ever see here in this castle, and I see a lot of gowns!"

Belle glanced down at the butter yellow gown with its orange and red silk roses. It was the most elaborate thing she'd ever worn, but it was hardly the most extravagant gown that had been prepared for her journey to Italy. She and Adam were to be accompanied by Chapeau, Lumière, and Plumette (who had been a bit disheartened to discover she was _not_ pregnant). There would be trunks and servants and a grand cavalcade because, after all, they were royalty. Belle curled her lip up with distaste at that thought and demanded of the other women,

"What if I can't pass for a princess?"

"But you _are_ a princess, Madame," Plumette assured her, and Mrs. Potts said warmly,

"You just be yourself, dearie, and you'll set a wonderful example for any other fine ladies you encounter."

"Just-a wait until-a the Master see you in this dress," Madame de Garderobe mused, and suddenly a man's voice said from the doorway.

"You don't have to wait long."

"Master!" Madame de Garderobe nearly dropped Frou-Frou as she flung herself from the divan in the parlor where the women had gathered. She and Mrs. Potts dipped into low curtsies, and Belle watched with a little discomfort as Plumette did the same. She smiled a bit at the prince and held her arms up expectantly.

"Well?"

"You look marvelous," he informed her, "but you need to get it off and packed, I'm afraid. The coachman wants to leave within the hour if we're to make La Souterraine by sundown. I'll wait for you downstairs."

"Be down in a minute," Belle promised him. Plumette dashed off to fetch Belle's plainer traveling dress, a simple dark red wool creation. As Belle slithered out of her myriad panniers and petticoats, she thought that she would look an utter fool dolled up the way a princess was meant to be. Perhaps, she thought, she could get away with only wearing the fancier dresses very rarely, and her normal clothes more often. Ultimately, she reckoned she'd wear whatever it took to get to Verona.

* * *

"I wonder how Plumette and Lumière and Chapeau are doing," Belle mused aloud, taking a bite from the apple she was eating and shutting her book. Adam stared across the carriage at her, sighing a little at how pretty she was in the candlelight.

"I'm sure Lumière's talking his face off," he said, "and I'm sure Plumette's hanging off of him, and I'm sure poor Chapeau is sitting there mute as ever. They're probably as ready as we are to be off the road for the night."

The horseman who'd ridden ahead to La Souterraine had returned just twenty minutes earlier, with news for the procession that the inn which was preparing for them was still a solid three miles away. That meant there was nearly an hour until they were sheltered for the night. The prince was more than enthusiastic about getting his aching bones out of the creaking, rocking carriage.

"I feel like we make for the most ridiculous parade," Belle declared, staring out the window into the fading sunlight. She shook her head and demanded, "How can two people require three personal servants, five armed coachmen, and two carts of trunks?"

"Because those two people are a prince and his wife," Adam reminded her. "It wouldn't do for us to show up in Italy -"

"What do you mean, _it wouldn't do?_" Belle scoffed. She laughed a bit and informed him, "You've had an entire lifetime of servants fawning over you, but let me tell you this - if I'd been offered the chance to go to Italy but had to do so all alone with just the clothes on my back, I'd have done so."

"I know you would have," Adam snapped, abruptly self-conscious. He tried to soften his face and voice and said, "Thank you for going with me. Like this."

He started to reach for her, intending on reconciling the tense moment by caressing her and perhaps doing more than that. But just as his hand hovered over her knee, Belle turned her face from the window and said,

"Perhaps you can ride with the men for a few days and let me start teaching Plumette how to read. Do you remember, Lumière said she can't read."

"Oh. Yes. I remember." Adam snatched his hand back and dragged it over his head, feigning a casual tone in his voice as he said, "I wouldn't mind riding with Lumière and Chapeau for a few days so you could… do that. Teach her to read."

"Something wrong?" Belle asked, furrowing her brow. The prince shook his head vigorously; it was obvious she was in no mood for anything physical.

"What were you reading?" he asked, intent on changing the subject away from how he'd apparently be spending time in a different carriage from her. Belle picked up the book on her seat and smiled a bit.

"Diderot," she said. "_Paradox of the Actor._ It's a dramatic essay that posits great actors do not need experience with the emotions they portray. For example, one needn't have experienced heartbreak firsthand to play it out on the stage."

"Oh. Well, I think Diderot is very wrong, then," Adam said sharply. When Belle cocked up an eyebrow, he was suddenly thrown back to the moment when she'd left in her yellow gown. He could still see her riding off on her white horse, the gown fluttering after her. He could still feel the ache in his chest, as if his soul had been torn to shreds. Even now, thinking of it, his breath shook a little. He told Belle, "One could never possibly imitate something like heartache with any accuracy unless it's been witnessed inside one's being."

Belle's face looked very sad then, and he knew she understood exactly what he meant. She sighed a bit and noted, "I suppose, then, that you'd agree with the Roman lyric poet Horace. He suggested the following - _Si vis me flere, primium tibi flendum est._"

"_If you want me to weep, you must first weep yourself,_" the prince translated. He shook his head. "He meant in rhetoric, not drama."

"He meant both," Belle corrected him. "Monsieur Expensive Education. But, really, does it matter what an actor sees in life and what they do on stage? Does a game of make-believe matter in comparison to the concerns of real people?"

"I don't know," Adam said honestly. "Does it?"

"Well, I certainly don't think so." Belle set her book down and informed him, "Tomorrow, I'll read Rousseau. I find I like his philosophy very much."

"And how will you spend the rest of the time to La Souterraine?" Adam asked. "Will you stare out the window into the inky night?"

"What are you suggesting?" Belle cocked up an eyebrow, and Adam found himself dragging his fingers from his knee up the inside of his thigh. He studied Belle's lovely features and insisted,

"I'm not suggesting anything."

"Liar," she said, not for the first time. This time, though, she wasn't frightened of him. This time she was grinning a bit wryly, and she reached across the carriage to cover his hand with hers. He sucked in air hard as she trailed their fingers further up.

Suddenly she was ignoring both her book and the window entirely. Her free hand went up Adam's other thigh, all of her fingers now stroking him through the velvet of his breeches. He shut his eyes and tipped his head back, feeling the flush of arousal that she so often awakened within him. All sorts of images flew

through his mind now - Belle atop his lap, bobbing up and down onto his staff as they both moaned and kissed. Belle on her knees, taking him in her mouth. Adam on his knees, his head up Belle's skirts.

Instead of any of that, he was greeted by the carriage jolting to a stop and a sharp rap on his window.

"Your Grace, we made far better time than expected. We've arrived at the inn."

Belle pulled her hand back, laughing demurely to herself as Adam said in a tight voice,

"Thank you. Go ahead and get everything inside, please."

"At once, Your Grace," said the unseen horseman politely. As the horse's hooves clattered off, Adam shut his eyes and desperately tried to make his erection fade. He felt Belle's hand on his smoothly-cropped beard, and he snarled,

"You're not helping."

"Thirty seconds ago you wanted to be inside of me," Belle whispered, and his eyes sprang open as he shot back.

"I still do. That's the problem."

"All right. Fine. I'm sorry." Belle still had a knowing smirk on her face as she picked up her book and said, "I'll just sit here and read Diderot until everything's inside. The inn. Not me."

"Belle…" Adam growled in warning. "Stop teasing me, or everyone else is going to see this carriage swaying and -"

"Are you _threatening_ me?" Belle asked, narrowing her eyes at him. She huffed out a little sigh and laughed again. "If you want to make it stop, just think of poor Cogsworth having to be with that awful woman who -"

"Thank you; that's worked just fine." Adam felt his want evaporate entirely, replaced by a deep sense of disgust. He shook his head and told Belle, "I promise you, Madame, that this carriage will not make it to Italy unsullied."

"Well." Belle dragged her fingers over the spine of her book and said, "That is a threat I can accept, my prince. For now, let's trade this carriage for some warm dinner and a soft bed, shall we?"

* * *

"She was… scared, so… she ran… away… from… him." Plumette yawned a bit, but Belle enthusiastically clapped her hands together and said,

"Oh, that was well done. Only six days in and you're already reading whole sentences. I'm very impressed, Plumette."

Plumette shut the little book and eyed Belle across the carriage. "Please don't misunderstand me, Madame," she said, "but after six days of constant reading, I long for my sweet Lumière again."

Belle smiled. "I understand. Perhaps we can switch back at lunch. I know firsthand how the prince has been enjoying his time in the boys' carriage, though. Sounds like they have funny conversations. Well, it sounds like Chapeau just listens, really, but…"

"My Lumière can be very funny even during long stretches of waiting," Plumette said. "I spent years with his voice and his jokes the only thing keeping me human."

Belle nodded gravely. "It must have been very difficult for you both. I don't think I've ever seen two people more in love with one another."

"Then you haven't looked in a mirror, Madame!" Plumette giggled. Her face went a little serious then as she admitted, "Lumière handled the situation better than I'd expected when I thought I was with his child. I loved him more than ever after that."

"Forgive me," Belle said, feeling awkward all of a sudden. "You say that you thought you were pregnant, but you weren't. Is this… a common error women make?"

Plumette seemed utterly unembarrassed as she said, "But of course. If your bleeding is off from normal, it's to be expected that you might suspect a pregnancy. Especially if you're with a man. But I was a feather duster for so long, you know? It's difficult to time things after that."

"To time things," Belle repeated, wishing she'd had a mother or a grandmother or a female friend or someone to tell her about all of this. Plumette looked a little confused at Belle's ignorance, but she warmly clarified,

"If you are with a man somewhere in the middle, you might find yourself with child. It's closer to the edges that you're safe." When Belle looked confused, Plumette smiled and said, "Say it's been two weeks since you started bleeding. Then… no, no! But if you've just finished or you're about to start, then you should be fine. I mistimed things - I was dangerous in the middle, you know? So when the bleeding didn't happen on time, I thought… but I don't even know if it's possible after being a feather duster for so long."

"Oh. I'm… sorry." Belle blinked quickly, knowing she herself had just stopped bleeding the day before, and asked, "How do you know all of this, Plumette?"

The other woman giggled and shrugged. "The castle's maids talk with one another. A doctor may give you bad information, but don't listen to him. We girls speak from experience."

Belle smirked. She stared out the window at the rocky, towering bluffs that signaled they were going through the foothills of the Alps. They were still at least six hours from the inn outside Nantua where they were to pass the night. Belle eyes a sheer cliff over a stream and murmured to Plumette,

"I'll bet Lumière would like you back now. You won't hurt my feelings by going. I've appreciated your company."

Plumette nodded happily, so Belle reached up for the knocker behind her and crashed it against the wall of the carriage several times. The horses pulling their carriage were pulled up by the coachman, who called out to the others to stop. Before he could come and help her down, Belle flung the door open and leaped down onto the dusty road. She trotted back to the other carriage and reached up to bang on the window. Inside, Adam startled and Lumière chuckled at the sight of the grinning princess. Chapeau stared in mute amusement. Adam pushed the window open and asked congenially,

"Can we help you, Madame?"

"I need my prince back," Belle announced, putting her hands on her hips, "and my exceptionally accomplished reading pupil would like a certain man called Lumière."

"Don't know 'im! Never 'eard of 'im!" Lumière called, making Adam laugh a little. Still, the prince bid his servants adieu and opened the door to the carriage. Plumette had come over, assisted down from the ladies' carriage by a coachman, and the two of them traded places. As Adam and Belle walked back to the carriage, he told her,

"Lumière and Chapeau are pleasant enough company, but I can't say I'm disappointed in this turn of events."

"Thank you in humoring me about teaching Plumette to read," Belle said quietly as she let him help her back up into the carriage. As he pulled the door shut and they got on their way again, she mused, "Plumette is far from the most enthusiastic reading student I've seen, but she humored me, too."

"The ability to read is an invaluable gift," Adam acknowledged. "One I'm sure you'll teach a great many people over time."

Belle smiled and tapped the simple book beside her she'd been using to help Plumette. "So. How was your time in the boys' club?"

The prince shrugged. "Chapeau must be spending a lot of time staring out the window pretending not to hear and see things. I'm just guessing."

Belle giggled and picked up the jug of water from the ground. It was very warm in this part of southern France. After she'd taken a deep draught of the water and set it back down, she yanked her skirts up around her knees and sighed with relief.

"Going to kick off your boots, too?" Adam teased, and Belle asked,

"Would you mind if I did?"

He shook his head seriously, so Belle reached down and untied her boots. She yanked them off with her woolen socks and sighed with relief. Her prince sat up a bit straighter and suggested, "Let's play a game."

"A game?" Belle repeated nervously, watching her husband's blue eyes flash. "What sort of game?"

"One of us asks the other a question, and it must be answered honestly. Then we switch turns."

Belle pursed her lips, thinking he must have some very specific questions in mind to suggest something like this. She narrowed her eyes with suspicion but said, "Fine, but if I want to stop playing, we stop."

"I'd never force you to do anything," Adam said with feigned innocence. Belle dragged her teeth over her lip as he said, "Ladies first."

"No. You go first." She wanted to know what exactly was on his mind, and she was hardly surprised when his face went serious and he asked,

"Were you more attracted to me as the Beast than you are now?"

"What? No!" Belle felt indignant anxiety course through her, and she shook her head. But he eyed her uncertainly, and she found herself stammering, "I… I fell in love with you when you looked differently than you do now, but you're… you're the same person. Just because I liked how big you were and the voice and the… the growl and the… you know, this is a really stupid game."

Adam was laughing hoarsely, seeming very amused by the answer he'd received. Finally he saw Belle's red cheeks and steadied himself. "I'm sorry," he fibbed. "I'll ask an easier question next time. Your turn."

Belle needed her revenge. She put her toes to the inside of Adam's ankle and dragged her foot slowly up his silk stocking. She hesitated at the inside of his thigh, stroking her foot back and forth a few times.

"W-what are you doing?" Adam asked breathlessly, but Belle shook her head and said firmly,

"It's my turn to ask the question."

Her foot dragged carefully along his raw silk breeches, up and down from his knee to his hip and back. The prince's hands gripped the edge of the plush seat, and he insisted, "Ask, then, will you?"

Belle tipped her head and asked in the most serious voice she could manage, "How does this make you feel?"

"Mmph. Good. It makes me feel very good. Obviously." Adam seized Belle's bare foot in his hands and warned her, "If you don't mean to follow through, don't start."

"Who said I didn't mean to follow through?" Belle demanded. She felt herself go very warm and wet between her legs, and she knew he'd be able to sense her want. She reached across the carriage and put her hands to the placket of Adam's breeches, unfastening the buttons one at a time. "Your turn to ask."

"Fine." His breath hissed through his clenched teeth as she pulled him out of his breeches, shoving the garment down his hips a little. She wrapped her fingers around the hard silk of his cock as he silently drew the curtains on the windows. No lantern was lit inside, so aside from the little slits of light coming in from the mountain passes, the carriage was suddenly very dark. Belle could hardly see Adam now, only occasionally getting a flash of light cast over his face as the carriage swayed and jerked over the hilly pass.

"I can't think of a question," Belle heard him groan finally, and as she dragged her fingers up and over his dewy tip, she informed him,

"You can skip your turn and give it to me."

"All right." His fingers tightened on the edge of the seat, Belle could see. She moved quickly and carefully then to straddle him, hiking her skirts farther up and grinding herself against the length she tucked up between them. His hands flew to her waist, and Belle put her lips beside his ear as she whispered,

"Will you finish inside of me?"

He pulled her back a little, and in the random jerks of white light, she could see his pale eyes flare with curiosity and confusion. She stroked at his blond hair, slightly damp with sweat in the heat, and she informed him,

"The timing is such that… well, you know. I shouldn't get pregnant."

"Are you very sure?" Adam asked, and Belle shrugged.

"I think so, yes. But in the very worst of cases, we are married. I need to feel you like that." She wondered suddenly if Plumette's concerns about her own body might apply to Adam. He'd spent so many years without his human form; could he even make a child if he wanted to do so? But Belle was only one day off her bleeding. They almost certainly wouldn't find out the answer to that now.

She couldn't think any more on it, for Adam was encouraging her up and onto the stiff invasion of his cock. She slid down, feeling stretched and filled in the best way possible. She rocked back and forth, trying to sync her movements with those of the carriage as she touched her lips to Adam's neck.

His beard was alternately scratchy and smooth on her cheek, and a shock of arousal jolted through Belle's veins at the feel of that. She pawed a little at his overdressed chest, yanking at his elaborate lace cravat until the tie came undone and it had unwound itself from from his neck. She pressed her mouth to the sweaty hollow of his throat, tasting salt on his warm skin as he groaned and gripped her waist more tightly.

Her movements became erratic as the sensation of him inside of her became almost too much to think through. Her prince's hands steadied her again, both of them finding the rhythm of the carriage's movement once more. Her body was snug around his warm, smooth firmness, and Belle shut her eyes as she moved her mouth to his and moaned. She suddenly thought she was surely climbing the rocky bluffs outside, for the beautiful tension within her was mounting swiftly.

"Belle," her husband cried, his hands pressing flat against her back. She was inexplicably angry with her clothes for existing then. She wanted his skin. She wanted to feel him all over.

The carriage jerked over a rough patch in the road, and Belle's body was repositioned a little. All of a sudden, his cock was hitting just the right spot as she bobbed and rocked. Belle buried her face in the crook of his neck and cried out, feeling everything burst into hot white pleasure that coursed through her like a flame. As the feeling faded and her body stopped clenching, she found it difficult to move her hips.

"Belle," he was murmuring, his voice saying her name over and over like a chanted prayer. He wrenched her hips down and shoved her shoulders back so he could look at her. A sliver of light from the window gave her a jagged view of his handsome face. His pale blue eyes shone wildly in the little bit of sunlight. His lips were parted and shaking, she could see, and he whispered again, "Are you very sure?"

Belle just nodded, and then Adam's lovely blue eyes shut and his face twisted into what might have been mistaken for an expression of pain. But Belle knew he wasn't in pain at all. She relished the feel of him swelling and twitching, of the obscene little leak from her body back onto his. She leaned forward, ignoring the stifling heat for a moment as she listened to his pulse racing through the flesh of his throat. He took a few deep, almost gasping breaths, and he wrapped his arms around Belle as he noted,

"I'm very glad you stopped your reading lessons to come and fetch me."

"You're not why we stopped out lessons!" Belle laughed. She managed to pull herself off of Adam, mumbling her thanks when he pulled out a handkerchief and cleaned them both up a bit. Belle pulled her skirts down just enough that she wasn't utterly revealed. Adam tucked himself back into his breeches, shoving his shirt back into his waistband as Belle tied the curtains back again.

"I thought of a question," he said at last, and as Belle uncorked the jug of water from the floor, she gave him an expectant look. She took a drink and passed him the water, and once he'd swigged a good deal down, he asked very seriously, "Have you any idea of how ferociously I love you?"

"I have some idea," Belle said, "for it's very mutual. And you were right about this carriage, by the way. It won't make it to Italy unsullied, after all."

He shrugged. "And we're only halfway there."

* * *

"Well. This feels awfully familiar." Adam smiled a bit down to Belle as they entered the Piazza delle Erbe. It was the same square they'd explored when they'd used his enchanted book to visit Verona. Belle's wide brown eyes made their way around the piazza, and she said,

"The sun feels so much warmer when it's real. The herbs in the market smell more fresh. I adore it. I feel like Juliet here."

"But your love is not forbidden," Adam reminded her, for he disliked when she compared her life to those of the doomed lovers. Belle rolled her eyes a little and teased him,

"I could compare us to Shakespeare's other lovers. Would that be better? Antony and Cleopatra. Ended really well for them, as I recall…"

"All right, all right." He paused in the corner of the piazza and put his hands on his hips, tipping his head as he challenged Belle, "Miranda and her prince."

"The Tempest," she grinned. "A beautiful play. And I would gladly speak Miranda's words. How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!"

Adam smirked. "Or, on the other hand… Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

"Oh, you." Belle laughed as she made her way forward between the endless stalls of herbs and flowers. She looked a vision in her cream-colored silk, which was fittingly embroidered with lilies and violets. She looked as regal on the outside as her mind was on the inside, Adam thought. He followed her through the stalls, smiling a little when she paused and pointed at a bundle of sunflowers. The elderly Italian woman working the stall grinned and held up four fingers. Belle silently counted out some coins and handed them over, shaking her head when the woman tried to hand a few back. She took the sunflowers and murmured in a voice confident from practice,

"Grazie, signora."

When she turned round to Adam, the sunflowers grasped tightly in her hands, he supposed she was the most beautiful creature who had ever lived. It took everything he had to follow her through the market, to stand back and let her buy poppies and lavender and rosemary. It took everything he had not to laugh aloud when a kitten came trotting by and Belle nearly scooped it up. And he couldn't help himself from grinning like a fool, no matter what he tried.

"The sun's going down," he said at last. "We should go back to the palazzo."

They'd rented a small palace inside the city walls from a local duke who was, ironically, visiting France. They'd been there for two weeks; their time in Verona was very nearly at an end. Now, as they strode through the sun-baked streets of Verona to the palazzo, Belle mused aloud,

"I could stay here forever and be happy."

"That isn't true," Adam argued. "In a few months, you'll be aching to see the library you created. Chip will be two inches taller, I reckon. You'll miss all that soon enough. I've done my share of traveling. I know."

"You got homesick?" Belle smirked, and Adam's stomach churned as he said honestly,

"Only before my mother died."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Belle pursed her lips, the evening sun casting a glow upon her freckled skin. Adam paused and took her face in the hand that wasn't carrying herbs. He shook his head and touched his lips to her forehead.

"You've absolutely nothing to be sorry for," he declared. He pulled back and dragged his thumb beneath her eye. "There was a gap in there, in which I barely lived. I partied the nights away, painted and preening like an idiot, but I wasn't alive. Then I wasn't human. Still not alive. It wasn't until you, Belle, that I realized for the first time in a very long while what exactly the purpose of breathing was."

Her eyes welled a little as she sighed and quoted The Tempest again. "What's past is prologue."

He smiled, grateful as ever for her mind as he replied with words from the third act of the same play. "I would not wish any companion in the world but you. Let's go inside."

* * *

"Hello, dear husband." Belle knew she must look like a complete idiot, kneeling on her bed and grinning as though she'd just been handed a great prize. Adam shut the bedchamber door behind him, looking very suspicious as he tucked his blue silk robe about his body. This was their penultimate night in Verona, and though they had one final day of sightseeing planned for the next day before moving on to Florence, Belle knew it must seem odd for her to be so happy. She was unsurprised when Adam asked,

"Are you drunk?"

Belle giggled madly, though she was perfectly sober, and she shook her head. "Plumette's with child."

"Oh. Again?" The prince seemed very confused indeed, and Belle snorted a little laugh.

"She was mistaken the first time round, but there's no mistake this time. She's very late and she's spent the past three days emptying her stomach with the sickness that categorizes early pregnancy."

"That… is entirely too much information," Adam noted. He stood near the open window, the bell tower of Verona's cathedral silhouetted in the night sky behind him. He frowned and noted, "They aren't married. Do they mean to get married?"

"Yes." Belle nodded and said happily, "They mean to get married in a few months, once everyone's back together at the castle. But when you and I go to Florence, Plumette and Lumière and Chapeau will be heading back to France."

Adam's strong brows furrowed, and he sounded almost angry as he demanded, "What the devil are you talking about?"

Belle rolled her eyes, frustrated with his inability to see reason in any of this. "We won't be starting our own journey back to France for several months. It won't be safe for Plumette to spend so very long in a carriage ride that goes through bumpy mountain passes. It's dangerous for the baby."

"She can't go home; she's your maid," Adam said plainly, and Belle scoffed.

"If you can't manage a journey through Italy without servitude, I feel sorry for you."

Adam put his lips into a straight line and crossed his arms over his chest. He seemed to be thinking for a great long while, and finally he said,

"All right. Fine. I suppose poor mute Chapeau can't stay on by himself. That would be awkward. I suppose it would be wrong to send a pregnant woman back to France by herself. Fine. I'll have to learn how to tie up your stays."

"It'll be more fun this way, anyway," Belle whispered furtively. She pulled herself off the bed and put her hands flat on Adam's chest. "The two of us alone, wearing ordinary clothes, meandering around Italy. Don't you want that more than you want the pomp and parade?"

"I suppose," he admitted. "It would be nice not to be stared at."

"Right," Belle nodded. "We've plenty of money for ordinary lodgings. Not that this palace isn't beautiful, but…"

"We'll still have to have the coachmen for our carriage and the cart," Adam mused, but Belle shook her head and said determinedly,

"Send the carriage home. Let's just keep one trunk. I'll drive the cart from inn to inn."

"Belle." Adam frowned and shook his head. "Now you're being ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?" she repeated, gnawing on her bottom lip and shrugging. "Is it so ridiculous that I might like to explore Italy without feeling like a doll?"

He scowled. "No, but -"

"Do you suppose we are incapable of enjoying ourselves without finery or servants?" Belle demanded, and Adam cocked up an eyebrow.

"Are you glad for Plumette's baby because you're happy for her or because it sends her away from here?"

"Both," Belle admitted. "Now… Lumière's back in your bedchamber, isn't he? I said I would be the one to tell you; I'm shocked he kept it quiet."

"Something did seem off about him, now that you mention it," Adam said gruffly. He touched his fingertips to his eyebrows and sighed. "I suppose I ought to go congratulate him."

"I think you should, after all he's done for you. For us." Belle took Adam's bearded face in her hands and forced him to look at her. She gave him a very deliberate stare and said, "Don't be angry with me. I love you. We will enjoy ourselves together. This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."

He rolled his eyes and brought her knuckles to his lips. "The Tempest again? We could go back and forth and back again with this one, you and I. Good wombs have borne bad sons."

"Oh, for goodness' sake." Belle swatted at his shoulder playfully, but an odd flash came over his eyes when she did it. He seized her face and kissed her hard, taking her by surprise with the force behind his lips. When at last he pulled away, leaving her breathless, he murmured,

"You're right about all this. It's very frustrating, how frequently you're right." He turned to go to the door, calling over his shoulder, "I'll be back once I've passed on my congratulations to the father-to-be."

* * *

"Lumière, you keep her safe on the way home. You, too, Chapeau."

The mute man nodded warmly at Belle, and Lumière wrapped his arm around Plumette's shoulders, staring at her with all the love in the world as he vowed,

"I will keep them both safe, Madame. But… are you sure you and His Grace will be all right without us?"

Belle glanced over her shoulder to see Adam hauling a trunk up into their cart. He was so much stronger than any normal man, she thought, and the sight of him lifting the trunk up himself would have been very strange to anyone who'd not known him as the Beast. Belle turned back to Lumière and nodded.

"We'll be just fine. If there's one thing the prince has needed all these years, it's to ride in a cart for four days to Florence and then to stay in an unremarkable inn when he arrives."

Plumette looked concerned. "But what if you encounter robbers on the road?"

Belle remembered the night that the Beast had beaten wolves away from her on the road outside the castle, and she told Plumette again, "I think we'll be just fine. We should all get going so that we can get a full day of travel in."

"Farewell, our sweet mistress." Lumière gave Belle a low obeisance. Chapeau followed suit, and Plumette curtsied. Belle kissed her cheeks and watched as they made their way to say goodbye to Adam. She hauled herself up into the cart, ensuring the length of the reins was to her liking. She'd put on a dark green bodice and skirt with a fresh linen blouse. She had a white lace shawl and a matching kerchief tying her hair back, and on her feet were sturdy brown boots. She looked an utter peasant, she knew, and she didn't care one bit.

She waved over her shoulder as Lumière, Chapeau, and Plumette loaded into their carriages, and she smiled as Adam approached. He was in red and brown today, the plainest clothes he owned, but he still looked noble. He climbed up beside Belle and sighed heavily.

"Are you very certain about this?" he asked for the tenth time since she'd suggested this plan. Belle rolled her eyes and cracked the reins gently against the horse's backs, urging them forward. She gave a wistful glance around as they headed out of town, and she murmured,

"Goodbye, Fair Verona."

"It's not too late," Adam said when they were a mile outside of the city gate. "We could catch them quickly on the northbound road and -"

"Oh, will you please stop?" Belle snapped, her patience with his childishness finally giving out. She adjusted her kerchief on her head and reminded him, "You married the daughter of an artist from a tiny town. You were a bedraggled beast in a forgotten castle when I met you. Please, can you please just let us have this? Can we please just go to Florence on our own and enjoy ourselves as real people?"

He looked mildly offended. "Royals aren't 'real people,' then? Is that it?"

Belle huffed in frustration, steering the horses left onto the southbound road. After what felt like an eternity of silence and a boundless expanse of flat farmland, she said quietly,

"You've told me numerous times that you despise the life you led before the curse. I'm sorry you're not sitting prim in a carriage just now. Sending Plumette back to France was the right thing to do."

"We could have gone back with them," Adam tried, and Belle shot him a withering look.

"Just tell me what you're actually worried about," she demanded, and his throat bobbed as he shrugged.

"What if something were to happen? What if you got ill, or we were robbed, or someone… attacked me? I'm not the same fearsome creature I was, Belle. I'm just a man now. Just an ordinary man."

"You're not an ordinary man," she told him, realizing at last that he was afraid. She kept her eyes on the road and said, "I'm used to fending for myself. If I can stave off Gaston's advances myself, I think together we could fight off highway robbers. Don't forget that we're armed."

She saw him flick his eyes back to their trunk. Beside it were two sabres and a small musket with supplies in the trunk. Belle had a knife concealed in her garter, and she knew Adam had one, as well. She touched at her thigh as if to remind him of her knife, and she said quietly,

"I can't wait to see the Duomo in Florence."

"You're incorrigible, you know that?" He smiled at long last, shaking his head in wonder. "However did you learn to be so obscenely brave?"

"I didn't learn," Belle insisted. "It's just what I am. Now. You've been to Florence. Tell me all about it."

"Don't you want to be surprised?" he asked, but Belle shook her head.

"I don't much like surprises."

"All right." He leaned over to plant a delicate kiss on Belle's cheek, and she grinned as the horses took them down the narrow gravel road. There was little shade in this open farmland, but there was no one in sight, and Belle felt utterly free and she listened to her prince speak. "Here's something interesting about Florence. The Grand Duke of Tuscany is my second cousin. We were meant to stay at one of his palaces, though I've written ahead to say we weren't coming. He's famous for his many, many… many… lovers. So I'm rather glad he doesn't get to lay eyes on you, if I'm honest."

"You think I'd galavant away from you with your womanizing cousin?" Belle laughed, and Adam tipped his head.

"They say he's very good-looking."

"Well, so are you," Belle assured him.

"He's just done something you might actually quite like, the Grand Duke," Adam noted. "He's opened several new art museums in the city; they're chock-full of works from Florence's heyday."

"Oh," Belle breathed, her heart fluttering a little as she nodded. "Yes, I'd like very much to see all the artwork. I could stand in front of a good painting for hours and study every brush stroke."

"And so you shall," her prince smiled. He reached boldly for Belle's knee, rubbing her leg a bit through her petticoats and skirts. He made a strange, soft little sound and told her, "You're very good at driving a cart."

Belle giggled and sat up a bit straighter on the leather seat. "I think you should always expected the unexpected when it comes to your wife."

"There's only one downside to you driving," he said, and she rolled her eyes as she said,

"You can't kiss me properly. Well, just count the miles until we get to Mantua for the night."

"And do you promise to kiss me in Mantua?" Adam asked. Belle nodded, turning her gaze from the road for a moment as she promised him,

"Oh, yes, Your Grace. I will kiss you in Mantua."

* * *

As it happened, Mantua was a lovely town on the banks of a lake, with parks and expansive swaths of trees throughout the city. Belle knew she'd have to study it more closely in the morning, for the sun had gone down by the time they pulled into the city center. They found an inn that looked nice enough, and they handed over the horses to be fed and watered. Adam accepted help from the innkeeper in getting their trunk upstairs to their lodging, if only because it would look very strange for him to haul it up the stairs himself. Dinner in the inn's tavern was chestnut crepes and roasted boar, with red wine and rich cookies. Belle was full to the brim with both food and drink by the time she made her way upstairs on tired legs.

"Ugh," she protested as Adam shut the door behind them. She pulled her kerchief from her head and her shawl from her shoulders as she declared, "My arms and neck are stiff from driving all day."

"You can teach me, and tomorrow I'll do it," Adam said. Belle grinned and nodded; she'd learned to drive a cart properly from her father, and there wasn't much to it. Still, it was a bit odd to think of Prince Adam of Vendôme, cousin of this region's Grand Duke, driving his own cart to Modena.

Belle unbuttoned the front of her bodice and peeled it off, tossing it into the trunk Adam had opened as he stripped off his own clothes. She pulled off her blouse and unbuttoned the side of her skirt and petticoat. She pulled off everything she could, and then she turned her back to her prince and asked in the hush of the unassuming little room,

"Will you help me out of the stays?"

His fingers deftly untied the stays, his hands going back to her after she pulled off the garment. She shivered as his touch dragged up from her spine toward her neck. He rubbed her there, massaging her so deeply that Belle let her head tip. She groaned, feeling the weight of all the wine in her mind as Adam's thumbs pressed deeply against her skin.

"Does it feel different?" she asked curiously. "Having hands instead of paws?"

"It does," he acknowledged, "but I like it better this way. I wouldn't have done this to you without the right sort of hands."

He reached around her, one hand reaching into the loose neckline of her chemise. He fondled her breast, his thumb dragging over her nipple, and Belle tipped her head back against his chest. His breath was warm on her face as he leaned down and reminded her,

"You said you would kiss me in Mantua."

"So I did." She turned round, glad to see him down to just his own undershirt and drawers. She snared her arms up and around his neck, and she said, "I'm sorry for mocking your worries."

"I'm sorry for worrying the way I did. You were right… as usual." He grumbled that last bit out, quirking up half his mouth. Belle reached up to comb her fingers through his blond hair, feeling the grit of the road's dust there. She shook her head and insisted,

"It's unreasonable to expect that a person born and raised as a prince would want to act like a peasant."

"Even more unreasonable to expect a free-thinking woman with a ferocious independent streak to play the porcelain doll," Adam countered. "Are we going to stand here apologizing all night? Because I'd much rather… you know."

"No, I don't know," Belle pretended, chewing her lip and smiling. "You'll have to be more clear. Sorry."

He growled and put his hand to the small of her back, bringing her flush against him. He ground against her belly, his cock already hard in his drawers as he whispered down to her, "Is this clear enough?"

Belle narrowed her eyes in the dimly-lit room. "Still not entirely sure what you… oof!"

She'd been cut off by the force of him pushing her down onto the lumpy bed. He whipped off his drawers with speed she hadn't expected of him, stepping out of them and not bothering with his shirt. He scrambled up onto the bed, pushing Belle's legs apart and touching the tip of his cock to her entrance. She was getting more wet by the moment, but when he hesitated, she arched her back up a little and said,

"Oh. That. That's what you wanted? Go ahead and take it, then."

He did, his body rocking against hers for what felt like a very long and blissful while before he crushed her mouth with his and spilled himself inside of her. Belle rushed to count days in her mind. Too close to the middle, she thought frantically through the kiss, but it was too late. She said nothing to Adam as he lay beside her, except for a goodnight and an I love you. But as she lay on her side, feeling the oozing evidence of his pleasure leaking onto the sheets, she shut her eyes and hoped for sterility.

* * *

"Oh, it's absolutely beautiful," Belle breathed as the buildings of Florence came into view. The orange-tiled roofs and the hills in the distance made for a truly beautiful panorama. Adam turned from where he was driving the cart so that he could answer Belle, but she suddenly bent over and clutched at her lower belly.

"What's wrong?" he asked worriedly, and Belle let out a caustic little laugh.

"Oh, you know. Cramps. Womanly cramps. That time of the month. Uncomfortable yet?"

He frowned and chewed his lip as he asked her, "Anything I can do to help?"

She laughed again and forced herself to sit up straighter. "Believe it or not, I'm so grateful that I can hardly feel the cramping."

Suddenly realization washed over Adam like a wave, and he asked, "Were you… were you frightened that you might be with child?"

"Well, yes," Belle said, as though it were obvious. Adam felt shame then, thinking he'd been careless that night in Madua a few days earlier. As it turned out, apparently, they'd had little to worry about, but he'd need to be far more cautious now that he'd seen where Belle's heart lay on the matter.

"I won't do that to you," he promised. "Not until you want nothing more than that. I have enough self-control not to do that to you."

Belle's face went peaceful then, even as she rubbed at the bottom of her bodice, and she nodded. "I love you."

He opened his mouth to answer, but the thudding of galloping horse hooves interrupted his thoughts. The prince turned his attention beyond the team pulling their cart, his eyes going wide when he saw that a horseman was coming straight at them at the road leading up the hill from distant Florence. On instinct, Adam's hand went to the knife in the holster beside him. He watched as Belle quickly reached beneath her own skirts and yanked out her brass-handled blade. Adam brought the cart to a stop and lay the reins between himself and Belle. The horseman approached quickly, his own milky white mount looking as breathless as though the poor thing had been running for miles without ceasing.

"Buongiorno," Adam called out, hoping that a friendly initiation of conversation might help things. He held his knife discreetly at his side, and he watched as Belle lay hers on her lap and covered the blade with her left hand. The horseman brought his panting mount to a halt beside them, sounding a bit out of breath himself as he spoke in heavily accented French.

"Your Grace," he said, sending a spike of alarm down Adam's back, "I come on behalf your cousin, His Grace the Grand Duke Leopoldo. I come… with an instruction, Your Grace. A request."

"How did you know who we are or where we'd be?" Belle demanded, but Adam said quietly from beside her,

"Perhaps the Grand Duke of Tuscany has eyes in Verona, eh?"

"Signora Belle." The horseman bowed his head respectfully and then spoke to the prince as he said, "His Grace the Grand Duke wish for you to attend his palace at once. He say you - his most respected cousin - can not stay in Florence without proper accommodations and service. Please, Your Grace… Signora. Do tell me I can escort you to him now."

Adam met Belle's eyes, and he shrugged helplessly. "It isn't for me to deny his request. He's the reigning Duke of these territories. And… he's my cousin."

"What if he thinks you're a bit younger than expected?" Belle asked through clenched teeth, her voice very soft and worried. She was right, of course. Adam ought to be and look in his forties now, if someone was basing their assumptions solely on his birth date. All Adam could hope was that the fuzzy sensation of memory and expectation that lingered in so many around his castle had extended to those who had known of him before the curse. He sighed heavily and told her again,

"We don't really have a choice."

She nodded determinedly and said in a brave voice to the horseman, "We are grateful for His Grace's hospitality. Please, signore, do take us to the palace."

* * *

Belle was very glad that Adam had insisted on bringing some of their finer clothes in the single trunk they'd brought. She stood in the almost overwhelming beauty of the Palazzo Pitti, sighing to herself as she realized her hope for a peasants' sightseeing drip was dissolving. It seemed that, now that Adam was human and remembered, there was no escaping the reality of his family.

"Bellissima, Signora," said the maid who had helped Belle dress. She nodded her thanks and stared at herself in the mirror. She had on wide panniers with her gown of jade green silk. Her hair was tied up into an elaborate knot, and a jaunty little straw hat was perched atop her head. She adjusted the little pink bows that went down the front of her bodice, huffing with irritation as she made her way out of the mirror-lined room. She and Adam had been shown into a suite of their own, and to the best of her knowledge, Adam had spent the time after their arrival chatting with his long-lost relative.

As Belle peered around the corner into the airy parlour, she spied the Grand Duke himself. His French was stern but immaculate as he said to Adam,

"I must say, my dear cousin, that I had thought you much older."

"Oh?" Adam said lightly. "We are as old as our women keep us, no?"

Belle scowled at that, but she quickly assessed that he'd seen her face peeking around the corner and wanted her to enter as a change of topic. Belle swept around the corner into the room, and Adam's face lit up with artificial surprise.

"Ah. There she is. Madame, may I present you to my dearest cousin, His Grace the Grand Duke Leopold II? Cousin, this is my wife, Belle."

"Your Grace." Belle dipped into a curtsy so low she thought her knees might give out, and she raised her eyes as she stood. Leopold had a broad jaw that jutted out, but in his eyes she could see a vague family resemblance with Adam. His white-wigged head dipped into a polite nod as he took Belle's hand and kissed her knuckles.

"Madame Belle," he said, not releasing her hand. "As lovely as her name implies."

His fingers tightened a little on Belle's and on instinct she snatched her hand back. She reached for her fan and opened it, giving an awkward little laugh as she did.

"Not nearly so beautiful as your palace, Your Grace," she noted, "though Adam and I were more than content to spend our nights in an ordinary inn."

"Yes, he told me you'd wanted the rustic experience. I'm sorry to put a damper on that," said Leopold. "You see, if word got round that the Grand Duke's own cousin was traveling about in a horse cart, it would be entirely too easy for the two of you to be taken hostage. My people would not respond well to taxpayer funds used as ransom for a particularly adventurous prince and his French wife."

"I see." Belle nodded, suddenly feeling very foolish, as though she'd not thought anything all the way through. What Leopold had just said did make sense. She gnawed her lip, knowing and not caring that she was smudging the red paint there.

"I would introduce you to my own darling wife, Maria Luisa," said Leopold, "but she's just given birth a few days ago to a son."

"Your first?" Adam asked amiably, and Leopold looked a little confused as he said,

"Eleventh."

Adam had been under the curse for so long that he'd missed the births of eleven children. Belle tried to quickly divert attention away from him by saying brashly,

"Oh, that poor woman."

Leopold chuckled at that and shrugged. "What can I say? I swear, sometimes she manages to become pregnant while still full of the last one."

Belle's false grin turned into a grimace as she realized the Duchess was living her entire life as a broodmare. She felt a little queasy then, remembering how Gaston had spoken of her bearing him children. And she thought of the overwhelming relief when she'd awakened to blood-stained drawers that morning.

"The sun's going down for the day, but that doesn't mean you can't sightsee right here at the Palazzo Pitti," Leopold mused. He turned his face to Belle, his eyes flicking from her face to her shoes and back as he said, "His Grace the Prince tells me you're an avid fan of art."

"I am," Belle said, flashing Adam a little smile. Leopold nodded and said,

"Come, then. You must let me show you the Palatine Gallery."

The Palatine Gallery, as it turned out, was a series of twenty-eight rooms, all of them filled with magnificent works of art. Belle felt the same blinding wonder she had when she'd entered the expansive library in the castle she now called home. She wandered around the rooms as the men talked quietly. She stood in the Room of Jupiter, her eyes locked onto a particular painting on the coral wall.

"She's so beautiful," Belle murmured, admiring the painted woman's wide dark eyes and warm-looking face. She examined the tiny cracks in the canvas, the brush strokes that were evidence of how this work had been made by human hands.

"That's The Veiled Lady by Raphael," said Leopold. "Rumor has it that the painted woman was positively beloved the artist."

"I believe that," Belle nodded. "He painted her like he loved her."

She thought of her father's paintings of her mother, of the way he'd drawn his daughter. Art was done differently, she thought, when the artist loved the subject. Her eyes burned all of a sudden, and she turned away as she said in an airy voice,

"Oh, let's keep looking. There are so very many paintings to see."

* * *

"Belle." Adam came walking into the obscenely plush bedroom, his body swathed in a midnight blue banyan. He shook his head and shrugged as he shut the door behind him and said, "I'm sorry. Very sorry that things aren't going according to your plan."

Belle sighed and sat up a bit straighter in the bed. "It's all right," she lied, but she was telling the truth as she pointed out, "He's not wrong, Leopold. If someone found out you were a prince, our little knives wouldn't have mattered. We'd have been dragged to Florence in our own cart, hands and feet bound with rope, as someone sent a message ahead to the Duke that he'd best prepare to empty his coffers. People are like that."

"People are horrible," Adam noted, and Belle corrected him,

"People are opportunistic. Rousseau said he preferred liberty with danger than peace with slavery. But your cousin is right; if someone had tried to use us as leverage, it would be the ordinary people of Florence to pay the price."

"We no longer have a carriage or escort for our trips to Rome or Venice," Adam pointed out, "and I can't very well as Leopold to fund that. What I can do is purchase a carriage and the services of a few armed coachmen to take us back to France. After we've spent a good while here, of course."

Belle felt more silly than ever as she realized her intransigence in Verona had cost them two cities' worth of adventure. Another strange thought crossed her mind, and as Adam climbed into bed beside her, she begged him,

"Don't be cross with Plumette. After so many years as a feather duster, with Lumière as a candelabra, can you blame them for wanting to be together?"

"No, I can't blame any man for wanting to be with the woman he loves," Adam said. "Though I would advise Leopold to perhaps keep himself off poor Maria Luisa for a while."

"Eleven children," Belle breathed. "And he isn't even that old."

"Rumor says he's got seven more by mistresses," Adam said, leaning back against the pillows. Belle pulled up against him, pressing her hand to his chest as she said aloud what she'd been thinking for days.

"I just want some time with you. With just you. Is that awful? Does that make me a bad wife?"

"Very much the opposite," Adam insisted, kissing her hair.

"I can… use my mouth on you, or something," Belle suggested, raising her eyes to him. He shook his head and frowned.

"Unlike certain Grand Dukes, I am more than content to simply fall asleep with my beautiful wife in my arms," he told her. Belle put her ear to his chest and listened to the slow, steady thump of his heart. She let her fingertips drift over the sparse hair on his chest, and she whispered,

"Even if we were magically taken straight home tomorrow, I'm grateful for the adventures we've already had."

"Seems like whatever you do is an adventure," Adam said. "I'm just along for the ride."

There was a peaceful quiet then, and Belle was almost asleep when she heard Adam say in a strangely determined voice,

"If I must be known far and wide as a prince, then I resolve to use that to the advantage of the general good. The moment we're home, I'm going to commission an architect to build the new hospital."

Belle smiled to herself and kissed his chest, muttering against his skin, "See? I told you you're a good man. Get some sleep; it's been a long day."

"Goodnight, my beauty," he whispered, and Belle fell asleep with her lips curled into a smile.


	5. Chapter 5

_"Oh, Gaston… mmm…" Belle's back arched up beneath the broad, black-haired man who had wanted her for so long. Gaston grasped roughly at Belle's breasts and muttered,_

_"Say it again, Belle. Tell me again."_

_"You saved me," she whispered on cue. She reached up and wrapped her fingers around his broad shoulders. "You saved me, Gaston, from that awful Beast."_

_"Belle!" Adam cried out from where he was chained to the wall, but it was as though Belle couldn't hear him at all. He glanced down, horrified to see that his hands had turned back into paws. He tore at his chains with all his might, but even as the Beast, he couldn't break away. He cried out in anger, his voice echoing off the stone walls of the tower room._

_"This castle is mine now, Belle, and so are you," Gaston was saying, and he bucked his hips hard against Belle. "Now say it again."_

_Belle gasped, a flush coming over her face as Adam snarled and yanked at his chains. Her eyes were glazed with want as she breathed once more, "You saved me, Gaston."_

_"That's right." Gaston's hands were rough and thorough as he examined Belle's body. Adam tried to scream Belle's name, but it came out as a wordless, animalistic roar. He blinked quickly, his eyes welling with hot, unbidden tears as the room started to go dark. He could hear Belle moaning, could see the fading specter of her alabaster skin beneath Gaston, and he shut his eyes._

Adam sprang up in the bed he'd been sharing with Belle for the three days they'd been in Florence. Beside him, she moved a little at his sudden awakening, but she stayed stubbornly asleep. Adam could hardly blame her; they'd climbed endless stairs and walked maze-like corridors today at the beautiful cathedral and its Duomo. Belle had fallen asleep hard, and even the way Adam frantically panted now wasn't enough to rouse her.

He stared down at her face in the dim white glow of the full moon coming through the window. She was so beautiful that his chest ached. He could see the freckles that were dusted across her nose and cheeks, and he was thrown back into his nightmare. Her pretty skin had been soiled by Gaston's touch, and Adam had been the Beast, chained and bound and ignored. He shut his eyes, trying desperately to get the awful dream out of his mind.

Sometimes he still couldn't fathom that the curse had been broken, that Belle had fallen in love with him even when he hadn't possessed his human form. Sometimes he still couldn't believe that Belle had agreed to marry him, that she actually kissed him and touched him. He needed her to touch him now. He needed to hear her reassure him that his nightmare had just been the awful hallucinations of his troubled mind.

"Belle," he whispered, brushing a knuckle over her cheekbone. She squirmed a bit where she lay and made a quiet sound that sent a twist of pain through Adam's belly. He brushed his fingers over her cheek again and said in a soft but insistent voice, "Belle."

"What is it?" She rolled over and blinked her eyes open slowly, her brows furrowing at once when she saw the way a silent tear was working its way down her prince's cheek. She seemed to wake up fully at once, and as she sat up slowly, she demanded, "What's wrong?"

"I dreamed… I…" Adam wasn't sure how to tell her the evils his mind had cooked up. He wrenched his eyes shut, making fists on the silk covers as he admitted, "I dreamed you were with Gaston. That he was taking you in front of me. I was… him. I was the Beast. I was chained to the wall. I called out, but you couldn't hear me. Wouldn't hear me."

"I hear you now," Belle said gently, "and I am here. I am yours. You are mine. Gaston is dead. Do you hear me?"

"Yes." He kept his eyes shut even as she crawled atop him, her knees going to the sides of his thighs as Belle snaked her arms around his shoulders. She kissed his bearded cheek and murmured beside his ear,

"I love you now. I loved you then, too. I have never loved anyone but you. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Adam whispered again, but he could hear the terrible shake in his own voice. His hands went, very much of their own accord, to Belle's cheeks, and he touched his lips to her forehead as he opened his eyes at last. Belle smirked up at him and shook her head as she informed him,

"You need to relax."

"I'm trying," Adam said defensively, but even as he said it, he felt the muscles in his chest and arms tighten up. Belle started to work her way down his body, and Adam could help but ask sharply, "What are you doing?"

"Helping you relax," Belle said matter-of-factly, "so that we can both go back to sleep. We've a busy day of art-viewing tomorrow, and I mean to be well-rested."

"Belle," the prince choked out, for she had positioned herself between his legs and was hiking up the hem of his nightshirt. He wore no drawers beneath it, and so when she pulled the nightshirt up, his manhood was bared to her in its flaccid entirety. Belle didn't seem to mind the appearance of him like this; she let out a soft noise that sent blood coursing wildly through Adam's veins. He felt himself go a little hard, and when her fingers drifted over the twin orbs beneath his cock, he shuddered and said, "You don't have to do that."

"I know," Belle said quietly, studying him as though his member was very interesting indeed. She raised her pretty brown eyes to him in the moonlight and said, "I want to do it."

Belle began running her hands around his thighs, her fingers drifting over the coarse hair on his skin as she pressed little kisses here and there. Adam felt himself go utterly hard at that, at the way her hands and lips teased everywhere except for his actual cock. Finally she kissed the fold where his leg met his hip, and Adam hissed desperately through his teeth. He resisted the urge to seize Belle's head and shove her mouth down onto him. Instead he squeezed the blanket in his fists and said in a tight voice,

"You don't have to do this, but I'm going to stop protesting now."

She laughed softly, her breath warm on the skin of his hip as she rubbed the outsides of his thighs again. Her eyes met Adam's, her gaze steady and sure, and she wrapped her hand around his shaft. She managed to look elegant somehow as she licked her lips, parted them, and pushed the head of Adam's cock into her mouth. He had to fight not to buck his hips up, afraid he would choke her if he did. He was dizzy and his heart seemed like it was going to beat straight out of his chest as Belle slid down his length. She was being careful, he could tell, to make it plenty wet, and after a moment, her hand started to move with her mouth.

She was pumping steadily then, her tongue swirling around his tip every time she came up. For someone who was allegedly completely inexperienced with this, Adam thought, Belle was awfully talented with her mouth. But she was a woman of logic; she would be able to use his feedback and her own brain to figure out what worked. She was certainly doing that; she was making him go tight from the inside out so quickly that he actually pulled her head back gently and requested,

"Give me a minute. Please."

Belle looked terribly amused with herself, and her swollen lips quirked up as her fingers drifted around him. Adam finally gave up on stamina, knowing that this felt far too good for it to last. He didn't protest when Belle pulled him into her mouth again, but his own breath left him entirely for a moment when she pushed so far down that he bumped the back of her throat. She gagged for a half second and then wisely started to make swallowing motions with her throat. It was so good, Adam thought. It was the pure definition of good, the way her throat was wet and tight around his tip. He did grasp her face now, hoping he wasn't hurting her as his hips crept upward.

"Unless you want to taste… it… I suggest you… mmph, Belle! Stop. Stop!"

She ripped her mouth off of him just in time. His body went tight and the invisible string running from his toes to his head snapped. Everything went white-hot and then completely blank for a moment. He watched as his seed pumped from his cock, leaping in ropes onto Belle's cheek and running down her neck onto her chest. The sight of that was almost too much, and Adam thought for a moment that he might pass out entirely. Belle gave a gentle little laugh and stroked him through the climax, setting his softening cock down against his belly once it had all passed.

"Sorry," Adam murmured, running his fingers through his loose, sweaty hair. "And… thank you. Very much."

"You're welcome," Belle shrugged, slithering off the bed and making her way to the wash stand. She wrung out a cloth and started to clean herself off, and her voice was peaceful as she noted, "I guess those few days a month don't have to be utterly useless in this regard, hmm?"

"Belle."

She turned around at the serious tone in his voice, and Adam gulped hard as he told her again, "Thank you."

He wasn't just thanking her for what she'd done to his body, and she knew that. He was thanking her for her level head, for her steady soul. He was thanking her for the fact that he'd awakened from a terrible but improbable dream and had been greeting by her reassuring words and loving touch. He was thanking her simply for existing, and he could see in her damp eyes that she knew that. She nodded a few times where she stood bathed in moonlight, and she told him again,

"I love you."

"Are you very certain of that?" he asked, for it again seemed such an improbable claim. Belle walked straight to the bed and crawled in beside him. As she nestled back down onto her pillows, she quoted Hamlet at him to cement the matter.

"Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the Sun doth move," she said, shutting her eyes and sighing. "Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love."

* * *

"_Eminenza, vi presento il principe e la principessa di Vendome._" The guard at the door to the cathedral gestured grandly inside, and Belle walked with her hand perched on Adam's arm into the building. They both crossed themselves with Holy Water at the entry, and then Belle immediately dipped into a low curtsy. She was wearing a deep red silk gown and black lace over her head today, for she and Adam were being hosted in the cathedral by the Florentine Cardinal himself. Adam and the Cardinal nodded politely at one another, for in the grand scheme of things, their rank was similar.

"Your Grace. Madame Belle." The Cardinal, an ancient man with a kind face, spoke in stilted French as he said, "I am so pleased you wanted to see our frescoes."

"If I am honest, Your Eminence, it is Belle who convinced me of the importance of seeing the frescoes. Not that I don't appreciate them, but she claims they are storied the world over for their beauty and artistry."

The Cardinal puffed up with pride and gave Belle a warm look. "That they are, Madame. Please, this way… I would love to begin by showing you this work by del Castagno."

He led them to the left internal wall of the cathedral. The interior of the building was deliberately vast and empty-feeling, so though the artworks within were fine and notable, they were fewer in number than in cramped places like Notre-Dame. On the left wall, there was an enormous monument, a worn fresco to which the Cardinal gestured as he said,

"This one and the fresco beside it are painted to resemble a marble statue."

"I can certainly see that," Adam nodded. "It's astonishing; from far away they look three-dimensional, and it isn't until you get awfully close that you realize they aren't."

Belle grinned up at the fresco and pointed to one fresco and then the other. "This one seems far more loose, more free. The elegant hat, the cloak blowing out in the wind. It's much more whimsical than the other. Is there a significant time difference in when they were completed?"

"Indeed, Signora," the Cardinal said. "The one on the left was done thirty years earlier; the one on the right is more definitively in the style of Florence. Would you care to see some of our other works?"

They spent another hour wandering the interior of the cathedral with the Cardinal, gazing at statues and enormous clocks and paintings. It was only when Belle's stomach was aching with hunger that she finally allowed herself to be dragged from the church. She thanked the Cardinal profusely for his time as they left, and he sounded much like Père Robert back in Villeneuve as he said,

"Signora, you care more deeply for Florence's artwork than the vast majority of this city! And, of course, you are welcome any time in this House of God. Blessings be upon you. And you, Your Grace."

"Thank you." Adam stepped out with Belle into the blazing sun of the late afternoon. They'd skipped lunch to come here, and Belle had only had a bit of melon in the morning. She was woozy with hunger as she accepted help up into their shining black carriage. As she settled onto the velvet seat and flung open the window, she declared,

"I have never in my life felt as famished as I am now."

"They'll have an early dinner ready when we get back to the palace," Adam assured her, and though it was a forty-five minute ride there through the busy city streets, Belle nodded. She gazed out the window at the extravagant buildings surrounding the cathedral, and she mused,

"This city is divine."

"Is that a pun?" Adam asked, and when Belle gave him a curious look, he specified, "Divine Comedy. Dante. The… the painting of Dante looking over Florence inside the cathedral. All right, fine. It was a bad joke."

Belle giggled and shook her head. "It was a fine joke," she assured him. She sighed heavily and said, "A letter came this morning; I hadn't had a chance to tell you since we were discussing Michelangelo the whole ride to the cathedral earlier."

"A letter," Adam repeated, sounding curious. He shook his head. "A letter from whom?"

"From Père Robert," Belle said. "Apparently, someone at the castle gave him our rough itinerary and he sent it by messenger. Shall I read it to you?"

"Yes. Please." Adam seemed very curious indeed then. Belle reached into her silk skirts, into the deep pocket that was tied around her waist and hidden beneath her layers. She pulled out the folded parchment and read,

"_Madame Belle,_

_I write with the hope that your new marriage is full of many blessings, and that you and His Grace are experiencing great happiness on your voyage through Italy. I also write with news of our library._

_Little Madeleine has managed to convince four other girls to take up reading, and with some persuasion from yours truly, the school's Headmaster has been convinced to administer reading lessons to the girls outside of the boys' school hours. The girls, along with a few of the more literary boys from the school, make up the bulk of our patronage. Among them, they take out at least fifteen books per week, which are read and treasured and dutifully returned in perfect condition."_

Belle paused, raising her eyes to Adam and studying the happy look on his face. Her own heart fluttered with glee as she returned her eyes to the letter and finished reading.

_"While perhaps the adult population of Villeneuve is not open to the power of a good book, I do think the town's children are already benefitting enormously from this library. The garden looks better than ever. The chickens are fat. Philippe seems blissful. It is all a more than noble legacy for your good father to have left. I thank you most heartily for your generosity, and I look forward to you meeting with the children upon your return to France._

_Yours in friendship and in Christ Jesus,_

_Père Robert."_

Belle blinked away a few tears and folded the letter back up. As she tucked it away again, her prince shook his head and asked in disbelief,

"How could you forget to tell me about that?" he demanded. The truth was that Belle hadn't forgotten; she'd been so overcome with emotion the first time she'd read through the letter than she'd needed time to process it. Adam suddenly seemed to understand that, and he nodded as he said,

"When we're home again, you'll be like a mother to them."

"Yes," Belle nodded vehemently, for far more than she wanted an infant, she wanted pupils. She curled her lips up and said, "We ought to stock more books in there. More variety."

"That sounds splendid," the prince said. "You should write back to Père Robert. Tell him Lumière will show him to the library and help him get any books he wants back to Villeneuve. That way, he doesn't have to wait until you get home."

* * *

"Come in," Belle called after four soft knocks sounded on her bedchamber door. She was sitting at her boudoir, combing her hair slowly after having dismissed the maids. She assumed it was Adam knocking; he and the Grand Duke had been playing cards with a few other men after dinner, and Belle had grown more than a little bored. She'd taken a long bath in a copper tub, feeling badly that the maids had had to fill and drain it, and now she sat in a silk robe, dragging a comb through her lightly oiled hair.

She was utterly shocked, therefore, when the door opened to reveal not Adam, but the Grand Duke Leopold. Belle flew to her feet and stumbled backward a few steps from her boudoir. She finally found the presence of mind to curtsy, which was awkward given her state of relative undress. Leopold silently shut the door behind him, and suddenly waves of alcohol came washing off of him. He was utterly sloshed, Belle could tell.

"My, but you are beautiful. Just like the name says," Leopold slurred. "So often, women's names don't mean exactly what the woman is. You know, like… if a woman is named Flora, but she's not a flower."

"Your Grace, with all due respect, I suspect you've had far too much to drink," Belle said in the calmest voice she could muster. "Is it possible you meant to go somewhere else?"

"Hmm." He leaned onto the wall and rubbed at his eyes as though he were sleepy. "I told the boys I was going to check on Maria Luisa and the baby. Said I'd sit out a few hands. Your husband is… not very good at cards, I'm afraid."

"I'm not really concerned with his card-playing abilities," Belle said softly. She took another step backward and pulled her robe more tightly around herself. "If you said you were going to check on your wife, that's what you should do, Your Grace."

"Ever since you arrived here, I've wanted you," Leopold said, pulling himself off the wall. Belle's mouth fell open in shock, but before she could speak, he walked up to her and continued boldly, "Those lips of yours. What do they taste like, I wonder?"

"You'll never find that out… Your. Grace." Belle took another step backward, but Leopold reached for her shoulders. His glazed eyes looked hungry as he said,

"My cousin's a handsome man. There's no denying that. But do you know how many children I've created? How many times of bedding a woman do you suppose that takes? How much experience do you think I have? The pleasure I could give you, Belle, is -"

She slapped him then, not worried about the consequences of doing so. She pulled her hand back and slapped him so hard that her fingers stung and her palm hurt. His pale cheek flared red at once, and it seemed like he'd been jarred from a trance. He took a step or two back and murmured,

"I've forgotten myself, Madame. Forgive me."

"Please send my husband in at once," Belle said, her voice shaking. "Take his place in whatever hand they're playing. I want him here immediately, and I want you out of this room. We'll be gone in the morning."

Leopold looked humiliated then, rubbing at his eyes again as drawled, "Belle, I can't… I'm very sorry."

"If you could just… go. And send the Prince in immediately. Goodnight." Belle left no room for further discussion, and as the Grand Duke opened the door again to go, his cheek was still an angry scarlet. Adam would see that red cheek, Belle knew, and once she told him why she'd slapped his cousin, he'd want to do more. He'd have vengeance in his heart.

Sensing that she might beat her letter to Père Robert back to France, Belle began shoving as many belongings as she could into the trunk they'd brought from Verona.

* * *

"Are you unwell?" Adam asked as he flung the door to Belle's bedchamber open. He gestured back out from where he'd come and said, "Leopold said that the maid told him -"

"Ha! The maid told him!" Belle scoffed, wringing her hands together before her and letting out a darkly amused huff. "Of course the maid told him. Of course she did."

"Belle." Adam frowned, feeling his stomach twist with anxiety. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, his voice nervous as he asked, "What happened?"

Belle paused, her hands still wringing furiously together as she said in an angry voice, "He came in here. The Grand Duke himself. Knocked on my door and then came in here, and…"

She trailed off, probably because she could see the way Adam's face had gone hot and red, the way his breath had quickened, and the way his hands had balled into fists at his sides. He panted through his nose, his nostrils flaring with sudden rage, and his words came through clenched teeth as he asked in a dangerous tone,

"Did he touch you?"

Belle crossed her arms over her chest. "Adam, it isn't worth -"

"Did he touch you, Belle?" Adam demanded again, taking a step toward her. She shut her eyes and nodded silently, and something snapped inside of the prince. He flung his arm toward her boudoir, his fist crashing into the silver mirror his cousin owned. It shattered beneath the force of his blow, little shards of glass careening down around the bottles of perfume and hairbrushes. Belle yelped and jumped back a little, and she insisted,

"He put his hands on my shoulders. That's all. He spoke very crudely about tasting my lips. But if you go out there and kill him, you will be hanged. You can't -"

"He touched you," Adam interrupted her, his voice an airy, shaking whine. He was shaking from the inside out, and he closed his eyes as he said to Belle, "I'm going to go… speak with him."

"No." Belle put her hands on the prince's chest and said again, "They'll kill you if you do anything to their Grand Duke. We just need to leave in the morning, straight away."

"That isn't a simple task," Adam snarled. "I'm going to go demand he arrange for a carriage and cart and coachmen to escort us back to France."

"You trust his men?" Belle asked incredulously. "Why don't we just take a cart back ourselves?"

"I'll trust his men when I pay them extra myself," Adam said. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to take one of the shards of the broken mirror and shove it into his cousin's neck. His teeth sank so hard into his bottom lip that he tasted blood, and he distantly heard Belle say,

"You need to calm down. He didn't hurt me. I slapped him hard."

"I'm going to speak with him," Adam said again. "Stay here and only answer the door if you hear my voice on the other side."

He stormed out of her room then, slamming the door shut behind him as he stomped out through the parlor and down the long corridor back to the gaming room from whence he'd been summoned. When he stepped through the doorway, he could immediately see fear and guilt written on the Grand Duke's face.

"Leopold, I need to speak with you. Privately. Now." The prince left out all proper demeanor, all pomp and circumstance, as he jerked his head toward the door. The other two men they'd been playing with flew to their feet and bowed to both duke and prince before scuttering away. Leopold started to rise from where he sat, but Adam hissed, "Sit down."

Leopold did, rubbing at his forehead as he said in a voice blurry from wine, "My dearest cousin, it seems I have made a terrible mistake. Allow me to apologize."

"Entering my wife's room, propositioning her, and laying your hands upon her is not a mistake," Adam sneered, walking slowly around the table. "Spilling tea on a book page is a mistake. Saying the wrong word in a foreign language is a mistake. What you did was very deliberate. When the sun comes up, there will be a carriage, a cart, and two armed coachmen prepared to escort Belle and me back to my own castle."

"Of course," Leopold nodded. He seemed frightened then, for Adam was looming over him, and his hands gripped the edge of the table as he shrugged and said, "I'm a fool for women. Yours is especially beautiful. Be grateful she said no, Adam. So many say yes behind their husbands' backs."

"You are indeed a fool," Adam agreed, "and she is beautiful. And she is intelligent."

"And she is yours," Leopold rushed to say, but Adam shook his head.

"She is her own, and you made her feel unsafe. Duty does compel me to do one thing. Stand up."

Leopold rose on shaking legs from his chair, his glassy eyes silently pleading with Adam for mercy. Adam had none to spare. He punched Leopold's face, pulling his fist back and then barrelling it forward. His knuckles crashed against the same cheek that Belle had slapped. Leopold's face careened to the side, and he stumbled away from Adam as he lost his balance.

Adam rushed over and hauled Leopold up by his shirt, using only his left arm to dangle the man's weight. He wound up and punched again, this time hitting Leopold's jaw. The Grand Duke gripped at his mouth, moaning softly, and Adam could see he'd managed to do some damage. He released his hold on Leopold, who crumpled to the ground as blood trickled over his fingers.

"Fine. All right. I deserved that," Leopold groaned, eyeing his cousin with a blend of suspicion and fear. He nodded, his hand still cupped around his bleeding mouth and his eye already starting to swell shut. His words were almost incomprehensible when he spoke, thanks to the wine and the swelling. "In the morning, there will be a carriage and a cart and two men ready for you. No need to say your farewells. Safe travels back to France."

Adam whirled over his shoulder, his skin tingling and his knuckles aching as he walked quickly back to his suite of rooms. He slammed the door from the parlor to the corridor shut, and when he reached Belle's room, he rapped on her door with his frayed knuckles.

"It's me," he said, his voice trembling. Belle opened the door immediately, pulling him inside and demanding,

"What did you do?"

"Punched him," Adam said, feeling numb. "Twice. It wasn't enough."

"You're overreacting now," said Belle, sounding cross. She put her hands on her hips and insisted, "We're leaving in the morning, so until then, you need to just forget about it and move on."

He stared at her like she had seven heads. "Forget about it… and… move on?" he repeated, scoffing and pacing like a rat in a cage. He was still shaking, still dizzy with rage, and it didn't help when Belle put her hand on his elbow and said softly,

"You're frightening me. Please."

"I can't help it! Don't you see? There's still… _him_… inside of me!" Adam whirled and growled his words down to Belle, who glared up at him with wide eyes. Finally, her gaze softened a little, and she reached for the placket of his breeches. Adam batted her hand away and barked, "What the devil are you doing? I can't think about that right now."

"You can't think about anything right now," Belle noted. "Nothing but hurting him, and if you do any more than you've already done, I swear, they'll put your head on a pike outside the city. You're going to calm down. Right now."

She untied the belt of her robe and let it fall from her shoulders, and she started to pull her nightgown over her head. Adam grabbed her hands away and stared down at her for a long moment. She smelled like the bath she'd had, like lavender and rose, and her hair was still slightly damp. She was more beautiful right now than ever, he thought. But she was wearing a nightgown that had been given to her here at the palace, an elaborate ribbon-bedecked thing that was entirely too frilly for a woman like Belle. Adam put his hands at the base of her neck, seizing the nightgown and ripping as hard as he could. She gasped as the fabric gave way, and Adam tore again. As the fabric yielded to his anger, he whispered in a rushed tone,

"Can I finish inside of you or not?"

"Yes," Belle mumbled, looking bewildered as she stepped out of her torn nightgown. "I… made a chart so it all makes sense. This is… one of the two safest days to… oh."

She'd trailed off then, for Adam had seized her cheek in one hand and a breast in the other. He felt her fingers go to the buttons on his breeches again, and this time he did not complain. She pulled him out and stroked him, dragging up a groan from deep in his chest. He kissed her as hard as he could manage, shoving her roughly back toward the bed. She flopped down onto her back and started to make her way to the pillows, but Adam seized her waist and dragged her to the edge of the mattress. He shoved her legs apart, shocked to find that she was already wet when he put his fingers between her thighs. Belle looked mildly embarrassed and admitted,

"I can't help it if it's alluring for you to be like this."

He panted roughly at that, knowing he was behaving like the Beast and for once not caring. He'd been a beast with Leopold, too, but Leopold had been a snake. Adam drove himself into Belle's willing body, grunting when he felt the way her walls embraced him. He shot her a meaningful glare and warned,

"I can't be gentle."

"Don't be gentle, then," Belle whispered, and suddenly the prince lost all semblance of self-control. He bent down, laying his weight onto Belle like he'd done inside her house in Villeneuve. He pinned her wrists to the mattress and bucked his hips so wildly against her that he could hear the slapping of their bodies meeting. He snarled and huffed with unbridled desire, his mouth latching onto Belle's neck and knowing he was leaving marks. She moaned continuously, her voice a descant against the low growls from her husband. Soon enough, he could feel her clenching around him. He could feel the way her back had arched so that she was pressing against his heavy weight. He lost himself a moment later, his cock pumping his seed deep inside of her as pleasure washed over him.

He stayed inside of her until his member went soft and worked its way out. His seed was spilling down her thigh, he knew. She was breathing like she'd been rescued from drowning, and a flush had come over her entire sweat-sheened body. In the aftermath of his climax, Adam felt a heavy sense of fatigue that managed to override the animalistic rage he'd felt earlier.

"Thank you," he whispered, touching his lips to Belle's. He meant it, too, and she seemed to understand that. As he pulled away from her, she seized his face and drew him back. She met his eyes and told him,

"This trip to Italy hasn't been anything like either of us expected, but I wouldn't trade it in for all the world. Just the same, I look forward to seeing my library again. I look forward to you building your hospital. And so I am not at all aggrieved to be going home."

Adam felt his eyes burn with wholly unsolicited tears, and he nodded as he murmured, "How very fortunate I am that you thought me worthy of marriage. Let's go to bed."

She kissed his lips gently and agreed. "Yes. Bed. And then, in the morning… homeward bound."

* * *

Of all the things Belle wanted to do as the sight of Florence faded into the distance, crying like a child was not one of them. And yet, here she was, hunched over in the carriage, sobbing. She wouldn't have been able to actually explain why. Perhaps part of it was that she was still shaken from the night before, from the way the Grand Duke had come into her room and touched her and made lewd comments about tasting her. Perhaps part of it was the wash of relief when they'd made it out of the city without being pursued by the Duke's horsemen demanding the arrest of the prince who had assaulted him. And perhaps part of it was the emotion she knew to be selfish and childish - the grief over not seeing Rome or Venice, and the irritation with being a princess in the first place.

Adam sat staring out the window, seeming to sense that his input would not be helpful just now. Belle finally overcame the sobbing bit of the process, quickly moving onto quiet anger as her breath regulated and her nose forced harsh sniffles to jolt her about. Finally she picked up the book from beside her and shoved it at her prince, demanding in the most polite voice she could manage just now,

"Read it to me, will you? I haven't started it yet."

She shut her eyes and leaned her head against the interior wall of the carriage as the warm Tuscan breeze came through the window. She tried to lose herself in dreary, ancient England as Adam read from _Le Morte D'Arthur_ \- Malory's version of the legend of King Arthur.

_"It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him for a long time. And the duke was called the Duke of Tintagil. And so by means King Uther sent for this due, charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine."_

For well over an hour, Adam read without ceasing, his voice growing more hoarse as he spoke. Belle kept her eyes shut, but was never once in danger of falling asleep, for she was losing herself entirely to the images spun by the words her husband recited. After a great long while, his cadence started to suffer, and finally he said,

"... _When the eleven kings saw that there was so few a fellowship did_… Belle, hit the knocker for the coachman to stop, will you?"

Belle's eyes sprang open, and she frowned as Adam set the book down on the bench beside him. He smirked and said,

"Too much water this morning."

"Oh." Belle slammed the knocker against the carriage wall a few times, and when the horses were drawn up, Adam hopped out of the carriage to go and relieve himself. Belle was startled when the coachman appeared at the doorway to the carriage, but his eyes and voice were warm as he asked,

"_Signora_, can I get you something to eat or drink from our stores?"

Belle smiled a little, grateful to have allies from Florence. She nodded, and when the coachman came back with bread and cheese and preserved meat, she thanked him as profusely as she could in Italian. The coachman watched as she spread the food out on a napkin on the seat beside her, and he said in an enthusiastic tone,

"I never see France before. I looking forward to it, eh? Tonight we stop in Bagno. There are hot spring there for to refresh your body!"

"Oh. That sounds marvelous," Belle smiled, and when Adam came walking up behind the coachman, she said to him, "Did you know we're stopping tonight in a place with hot springs for bathing?"

"That sounds splendid," Adam agreed. He turned his glance to the coachman and suggested, "Perhaps we can stay two nights there, if the messenger horseman can arrange for it."

"_Sì, certo, Vostra Grazia._ This can be arranged with no problem."

"_Grazie, Signore._" Belle grinned at their kindly coachman, though something told her Adam had given the man a substantial sum before they'd left Florence. They needed these riders and drivers to be loyal to them, not to the Grand Duke, but Belle suspected that wouldn't be difficult. The Grand Duke was pompous and often callous; she was trying her hardest to charm her way into the good graces of their temporary servants. As Adam pulled himself into the carriage, the coachman nodded and said through the window,

"Five more hours' ride to the villa, _Vostra Grazia_. I send the horseman ahead to arrange for the accommodations details, yes?"

"Thank you," Adam nodded. Once he'd settled onto his seat, he asked Belle in a gentle tone,

"Shall I keep reading to you about King Arthur?"

Belle took the book back from him as the carriage started moving. "I'll read it myself," she said. "Thank you."

"I was actually rather enjoying it," Adam admitted, looking the slightest bit embarrassed. "You're awfully pretty when your eyes are shut and you're lost in a world I'm painting for you with my voice."

Belle raised her eyebrows and passed the book back. "Go ahead and read, then," she said. Adam took a swig of water from the jug beside him and corked it. He set the jug down, cleared his throat, and started again from where he'd left off.

_"When the eleven kings saw that there was so few a fellowship did such deeds of arms, they were ashamed and set on them again fiercely; and there was Sir Ulfius' horse slain from under him, but he did marvelously well on foot."_

* * *

"My goodness," Belle breathed, stepping out onto the veranda that overlooked the sweeping countryside. Green hills and neat vineyards threaded before them. Belle gripped the wrought iron rail before her and asked, "Have you ever seen such a view?"

"No. Not quite like this," Adam admitted. The sun was going down, and Belle had made it plain she wanted a dip in the villa's private hot springs before night fell. She started to make her way down the stone steps to the place where the hot springs came straight out of the rocky earth and pooled. Their coachmen and horsemen had already arranged themselves in the adjacent guest house, for Adam had insisted they take comfortable accommodations instead of servants' quarters. Adam and Belle were, therefore, alone in the lovely 16th century villa they'd rented for two nights. There were resident maids inside in the servants' quarters, but Belle had requested privacy so they could bathe. Adam hadn't protested.

The spring smelled vaguely of sulfur and was clearly filled with all sorts of minerals, for the pooled water was completely opaque. The prince found himself grateful for the lanterns that had been lit on the exterior walls of the house, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to see well as the sun went down. Belle gasped with pleasure as she beheld the view from here; it was, somehow, even better than from up on the verandah.

She immediately stripped off her robe and nightgown, with such haste in her movements that Adam found himself wishing she'd slowed down. She put her clothes on the bench alongside the wall of the villa, and when she saw the way Adam was studying her, she asked self-consciously, "What is it?"

"Last night I punched the Grand Duke of Tuscany - twice - for touching you," Adam pointed out. He walked over to where she stood and snared his arms around her, pulling her close. "Not that I could blame him for wanting you, mind. He was very right to find you so beautiful. I find myself rather in awe of you every single time I lay eyes upon you. Do you know that? You should know that."

He was rambling, he knew, but he couldn't help himself. It was all almost overwhelming - the Italian countryside before them, Belle's beautiful body naked in his arms, the hot spring waiting for them. Adam gulped hard and tried to suppress the erection forming between his legs, but it was no use. Belle must have felt it against her belly, for she laughed softly and reached to stroke at him through his banyan and nightshirt.

"Don't, Belle; I'll wind up making a mess out here," Adam complained, but Belle pulled his face down to kiss her hard, and her hand worked its way beneath his banyan and under his nightshirt. He remembered, suddenly, the first time she'd done this to him. They hadn't even been married yet; he'd come into her room in the castle and she'd touched him in a way that made his veins start on fire. And she was doing it again, months later, here outside their rented villa in Tuscany. His breath quickened against her lips along with her hand, and all of a sudden he reckoned he couldn't help himself. He seized Belle by her tiny waist, and he lifted her up and carried her over to the smooth plaster wall of the villa.

She let out a surprised _oof_ as he planted her back against the wall, opening his banyan and using it to partially shield them from any prying eyes. He pushed into her as her legs wrapped tightly around his waist and her arms were snug around his shoulders. Belle's eyes were wide with surprised pleasure, her breath coming in pants as Adam drove himself into her again and again.

_Snug and wet and warm and beautiful and intelligent and kind and…_

His brain went in a million directions at once, his affection for her detonating as he crushed her mouth with his.

_Sweet and bold and brave and lovely…_

He couldn't help thinking all those things about her, because they were all true, but his mind reeled and his body screamed as he realized just how much he loved her. He wrenched himself out of her body and set her down on the ground, wholly unwilling to put a child inside of her when she didn't want such a thing. He snatched one of the smaller linen towels from the bench beside him and jerked himself into it, staring at Belle as he did. His voice let out a strangled little sound of completion, and Belle ran her fingers up and down his arm.

Five minutes later, they were both sinking into the hot spring, which felt like a dream in and of itself. It was like the world's most pleasant bath. Just hot enough but not scalding, the water was almost fizzy from how mineral-enriched it was. Belle sat beside Adam on the rough-hewn makeshift bench someone had carved long ago into the stone. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, feeling a bit awkward as he asked,

"Do you want me to… you know?"

She giggled and shook her head. She knew what he meant; he felt badly that he'd found his pleasure and she hadn't. But Belle raised her eyes to him and assured him,

"Sitting here, with Tuscany laid out before us… soaking in this pleasant warm water, with your arm around me and your eyes staring at me… there could be no physical sensation more satisfactory."

"I adore you," Adam informed her, just in case she didn't know. She did, he thought. She did know, but the way she smiled made it seem like he'd never told her. So he lowered his face to hers and kissed her as gently as he could, and he murmured again, "I adore you, Belle."

* * *

"I know I said that Tuscany was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and it was. Right up until this moment."

Belle gazed out the carriage window at the castle where the very most pivotal moments of her life had happened. This was the place where she'd fallen in love with a beast, the place where she'd been swept off her feet, where she'd been charmed by living houseware, where she'd settled into married life. They'd been gone now longer than she'd ever really known the place, but her chest still ached as though she were returning to her childhood home.

"It is beautiful when it isn't crumbling, isn't it?" Adam mused from across the carriage. This was his childhood home, though Belle knew it wasn't all happy memories for him. As the carriage clattered through the enormous gates and through the seemingly endless gardens, Adam reached for Belle's hands and informed her, "I had the time of my life, you know. On the way Italy. There. On the way back. Even in spite of everything, Belle, these last few months have been… heaven."

She managed to tear her face away from the castle long enough to meet his vibrant blue eyes, and she smiled as she told him, "It certainly was a strangely beautiful adventure."

This last month on the road had rattled their bones and made them weary, but books and wine and good humor had kept them chatting and dozing in relative peace. A few occasional arguments had cropped up about the merits of one author or another, and Belle had gone nearly an entire day without speaking to Adam after he'd called her 'silly' for liking flowery poetry. He'd apologized, gathered flowers from the mountainside pass on a lunch break, and she'd rolled her eyes and forgiven him. Then they'd carried on their way. This last day of travel had seemed interminable, for Belle had known they were getting closer with every bump and rock of the carriage.

The coachmen had already been paid very handsomely to return to Italy. Adam and Belle had offered the men as much rest as they needed in guest servants' quarters. They'd insisted on turning round and making it to the next closest village by nightfall, so the unloading and farewell process would be quick. When the carriage came to a stop, Belle realized that nearly the entire household had come outside to greet them. Her eyes welled as she saw Chip in front of Mrs. Potts. He was at least an inch taller, Belle reckoned. Plumette, whose pregnancy was just beginning to show, was standing beside Chapeau, Madame de Garderobe and Maestro Cadenza. Lumière and Cogsworth were waiting on the bottom step, and Lumière waved frantically as the carriage door opened. Belle let the coachman help her down, feeling self-conscious as the household servants she considered friends descended into bows and curtsies.

Belle had grown more accustomed over the last few months to the reality of being married to a prince. But that didn't stop her from bounding up the steps - squeezing Lumière's and Cogsworth's hands on the way - and flinging her arms around Mrs. Potts, exchanging pleasantries with Madame de Garderobe, and giving a warm smile to Chapeau. As Chip chattered with excitement, Belle approached Plumette and gave a knowing look to her belly.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, and Plumette beamed like the sun.

"Much better now that the worst few weeks are gone," Plumette promised. "Lumière wants to marry as soon as possible."

"I'm sure Madame de Garderobe will arrange for a beautiful gown for you," Belle said.

Dinner that night was pleasant; it was more than a little nice to be back in their own dining room. Belle and Adam discussed the household staff and how things had changed and stayed the same through the months they'd been gone. They discussed their plans to visit Villeneuve in the next several days to see Belle's library. Then, halfway through dinner, Cogsworth and Lumière came into the dining room, both of them looking utterly terrified.

"Master… Madame," Lumière said nervously, "She is here."

"Who is here?" asked Adam, and Cogsworth cleared his throat as he said,

"The… the enchantress, Master. And… well, we all know what happened the last time you turned her away."

"Agathe is here?" Belle flung her chair back and stood, and Adam rushed to do the same. The two of them followed Cogsworth and Lumière out of the dining room, Belle's heart pounding the entire way. They made their way down the double staircase into the foyer of the castle. Agathe stood looking serene in a heavy woolen cloak, for the night outside was cold. She dipped into a respectful curtsy and murmured,

"Your Grace. Madame."

"With all due respect, because I know you were merciful to Maurice in his last moments," Adam said sharply, "What are you doing here? The last time you came to my castle, you cursed me and everyone who lives here."

Agathe's facial expression did not change one bit as she pointed out, "With all due respect… you never would have met your wife without that curse."

Adam's cheeks went red, and he asked again, "Why have you come?"

"You want to build a hospital," Agathe pointed out, and Belle demanded,

"You're here to threaten his project to help his people?"

"No." Agathe shook her head. "I'm here to make it better. Build the hospital your own way and people will still die left and right. Such is the way of ordinary medicine. Let me build it for you, and many more will be spared their suffering."

"If you have the power to construct some magical hospital of endless healing, then why don't you just do it?" Adam asked, and Agathe sighed.

"They need to prove they have earned that sort of mercy."

"Who?" Belle asked, her voice shrill to her own ears. "The people of the villages around here?"

Agathe nodded once. "They are capable of goodness, but also of unimaginable cruelty. When the prince was a beast to them, they battered down his doors and tried to kill him. They are unkind to one another. They mock and stare at those who need help. They must prove they have earned the sort of hospital I would build for them."

"And how will they prove such a thing?" Belle asked. Agathe's face darkened, and she turned her gaze to Adam.

"When he was a beast, they wanted to kill him," she said again. "If they can show him kindness and respect, even as a beast, then the place of great mercy can be -"

"No. This is nonsense. Nothing but ugly nonsense," Adam barked. "You think I'm going to let you curse my castle and my staff and myself again to… to prove a point? To test the local populace?"

"Just you," Agathe said. "Three months' time. If by the end of three months, you can not walk freely as a beast down their village path, then you will become human again, and they will be doomed to die in the Plague that no magic can stop. This spring next, it will ravage the countryside. They can be healed and survive at the hospital I would build, but if such a thing will come to pass, they will be tested."

Belle's mouth fell open. "You'll get my husband killed," she insisted in an indignant voice. "I'll take him to the village and they'll burn him alive. Don't do this."

"The Plague is coming whether any of us want it or not," Agathe said softly. She stared Belle right in the face and said, "Sometimes very good people die of Plague."

"Agathe." Adam's voice cracked a little, and the enchantress turned her face toward him. He shook his head and pleaded, "Don't do this to me. I've only just started living my life as a… as the man I was meant to be. Please, just build the hospital that will save them. Or let me build my own to help as much as I can."

"If you want to help your people, spend the next three months convincing them to respect more deeply than by what they see. This is advice they will need when Plague makes widows of women and orphans of children. If you want to save as many of your people's lives as you can, walk the main street of Villeneuve as a beast and see them bow to their prince."

Adam shut his eyes, and Belle felt hers well with unbidden tears. She felt betrayed all of a sudden, and she told Agathe, "_Long and happy will your years with him be._ That's what you told me on my wedding day."

"I spoke the truth," Agathe nodded. "Please make your decision."

"Do it," Adam said at once, and Belle rushed to take his arm.

"No," she breathed. "No. Adam, please, don't do this to yourself."

"You fell in love with me in that form, didn't you?" he challenged her. "You kissed my head when I looked like that; you nursed me back to health from the wounds the wolves put on me. You… danced with me."

"It's not me I'm worried about," Belle said, shaking her head. "It's them. I can't trust them not to hurt you."

"Are you very certain it isn't her time to be the beast?" Adam asked Agathe, and Belle knew he was just trying to diffuse tension in this critical moment. He turned his attention back to Belle and took her face in his hands. She soaked in the feel of his skin on her cheeks, and when he touched his lips to hers, she drank in the human feel of his mouth. He touched his forehead to hers and murmured, "I learned the hard way that I have to take care of my people any way I can. If I need to become the beast again, just long enough to show them that even a fearsome monster can be a prince, then I will do it. If it will save children and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers when the Plague comes, then I will do it. Will you be beside me as I do?"

"Of course I will," Belle said, realizing it was the same way she'd answered him when he'd asked her to marry him. This, she figured, was just about as big a commitment. Adam stepped back and nodded silently to Agathe, who repeated in a solemn voice,

"Three months. The fourth of February."

She raised her hands up, and golden streams of light began to flow from her palms. Her fingers showered sparks into the air as if she was on fire. Adam fell to his knees, wrenching his eyes shut and making a noise as if he was in terrible pain.

"Don't hurt him!" Belle cried to Agathe, but the enchantress just stared at the prince as his skin and hair morphed. His face shifted; his shoulders and legs grew and bent. Thick brown hair covered him, and all Belle could do was stare as the beast who had terrified her at first glance materialized on the floor of the foyer. Behind her, Lumière and Cogsworth were shouting frantically to alert the others of what was going on. Belle's stomach twisted so badly she thought she might throw up on the floor. She turned her own face to angrily tell Agathe that this was cruel nonsense, but the enchantress had gone.

Adam - now fully the beast he'd been when Belle had met him - knelt on the floor, his breath coming in shallow puffs through his nostrils. Belle stepped in front of him, and he raised his familiar blue eyes. With him kneeling, she was right at eye level, and she took his face bravely in her hands. She brushed her thumbs over his enormous, fur-covered cheeks, and she leaned forward to touch her lips to his. He jerked in surprise, his hands - paws, Belle reminded herself - coming up to settle on Belle's waist. As she pulled her mouth away from his, his fang brushed against Belle's lip. She shivered with fear and something she couldn't quite identify.

"Can you stand?" she asked, backing up and covering his paws with her hands. Adam nodded, pulling himself up. He glanced down, seeming grateful that the enchantress' spell had grown his clothes with him.

"Oh, my goodness!"

"No, no! This can't be!"

"Master, how could you do this?"

The household servants came bustling into the foyer of the castle, and Belle squeezed Adam's paw as he turned to face the people who had been turned into objects for years. He shrugged and said to all of them,

"I lived like this for a very long time, most of that time with no hope I would ever be human again. In three months, I'll be human once more, and the choice before us is whether or not we will save lives. I will walk the streets of Villeneuve, looking just like this, and I will be greeted as a prince. It will happen."

"Yes, it will," Belle agreed, feeling a surge of determination when she saw the doubtful looks on Mrs. Potts' and Plumette's faces. Belle squeezed Adam's paw again and met his blue eyes as she spoke to the servants. "With some explanations, some conversations, and a good deal of… well, manipulation, I think the people of the town will do what we need them to do. This isn't a curse. It's an opportunity."

* * *

When Adam knocked on Belle's bedroom door, he felt dizzy and sick. He was still completely unhappy with the sight of a clawed paw knocking on the door instead of a human fist. When he breathed, it felt different; his chest was broader and could take in more air with each breath. His nose was shaped differently. When he blinked, he could feel the fur moving on his face. He did not feel human. And so when he knocked on his wife's door, he fully expected her to politely explain that she couldn't be anywhere near him when he was like this. It was, then, with great surprise that he observed Belle opening the door and sighing with relief.

"I was afraid you weren't coming," she said, pulling the door open and stepping aside. Adam followed her into the room, his voice back to its old deep gravel as he repeated,

"You were afraid I wasn't coming?"

"I thought perhaps you'd be too distraught over all this to come," Belle said, "but I'm not sure how I'm meant to sleep without you tonight of all nights."

"Belle…" Adam blinked a few times and shrugged. "In case you haven't noticed, I am no longer human."

She cocked up an eyebrow, looking shockingly pretty in her nightgown as she said, "Yes, I can plainly see that your body has taken a different form, but you are human. You are Prince Adam of Vendôme. If we want people to accept you as their prince like this, we'll have to start with the prince himself. Come lie down; it's so late and it's been the very longest day I can ever remember living." She started to make her way to her blue-and-gold bed, peeling back the covers as she said quickly, "I've got so many ideas on how to help the people understand. Drawings and Père Robert speaking in church, and… why are you still standing by the door?"

She'd climbed into the bed and was staring at him as though he'd suddenly sprouted five extra heads. Adam shrugged, which felt awful and large and foreign again, and he gulped hard as he said, "I didn't think you'd want to… to spend very much time with me like this."

She scoffed and ranked her hands through her hair. "Don't be a fool," she scolded him sharply. "I fell in love with you like this; it makes absolutely no difference to me whether your hair is blond or brown. Are you coming to bed, or aren't you?"

Still marveling at her nature, Adam untied the gigantic banyan he'd dug out of a trunk from the last time he'd been a beast. He hung it on a rack near the door and stepped over toward the bed. He was acutely aware of the thunk of his feet on the ground, of the way it was a paw that reached to pull his blankets back. He stared right at Belle as he noted,

"Before we were married, you said there were certain things you wouldn't do with me like this. Because it would feel wrong."

Belle smiled crookedly. "Not every thing of that nature involves a man thrusting and barrelling into his wife," she said. "And, in any case, I'm not worried about that right now. If I have to wait three months to be with you like that again, I'll gladly do so. Still, I think it would behoove us to try and meet this goal well before then. We'll talk more about ideas in the morning; I'm sure I'll dream up a hundred more."

"I'm sure you will," Adam agreed as Belle slithered down onto her pillows. She huffed and admitted,

"This is not what I expected our first day home would look like."

"You told me to always expected the unexpected with you," Adam reminded her, "so I've decided not to be surprised."

She smirked a little at his jape, and when he lay down beside her, she complained quietly, "You're taking up the entire bed yourself. I'm going to fall off."

"I'm sorry," said the prince. "I'll go sleep in my own -"

"No, it's fine," Belle assured him. "I'll just have to… mmph… do this."

She had pulled herself up against him, beneath his arm with her face nuzzled against his fur-covered chest. She laced one of her legs over his and said in a muffled voice,

"Cozy."

Adam shut his eyes, thinking he'd never been more in love with Belle than he was in this moment. He could be furious with the enchantress, he knew, or he could see this goal to fruition and save a good many of his people from inescapable Plague. With Belle's help, he would do the latter.


	6. Chapter 6

Belle was up before dawn, and she dressed as silently as she could in wool skirts and a matching homespun bodice. She went without stays, since she couldn't properly do them herself, but she didn't care today about appearances. She slipped out of the bedchamber and made her way down to the kitchens, where she found that Mrs. Potts was already making the beginnings of breakfast for the castle's inhabitants.

"Mrs. Potts?" Belle asked carefully, stepping into the kitchen and seeing the older woman whirl round. Mrs. Potts murmured to a few of the other kitchen servants to quietly attend to the porridge, and as she neared Belle, she swept her into a motherly embrace and whispered,

"You poor things, the both of you."

"I want to focus on action," Belle said firmly as she pulled away. "Mrs. Potts, after I've gone to the village a few times myself, will you come with me? To help convince the people. Your husband still comes back and forth; they're much warmer toward you than they are toward me."

"Of course I'll help, dearie!" Mrs. Potts nodded frantically and put her hands on Belle's shoulders. "You just let me know when, and I'll be in a cart to Villeneuve at once."

Belle gave her a little smile and nodded. "Thank you. Now, would it be possible for me to take some porridge and apples up to my bedroom? I think today more than usual, he might want to just... relax... for a while."

"I expect the Master's still in a terrible shock," Mrs. Potts nodded. She moved back to the ovens and began ladling porridge into small copper tureens. Belle scoffed as she picked up two apples from a basket and began slicing them on the butcher block.

"He's still asleep, or he was when I left," she told Mrs. Potts, who put the breakfast into a tray with a teapot and two cups.

"Men or beasts, they all sleep like rocks," she said. "Let me help you upstairs with this."

"I can do it, but thank you. Have a good morning." Belle took the heavy tray, silently willing herself not to spill it all over herself halfway up the stairs. She made it all the way to the door before she had a problem. She huffed and set the tray down on the ground outside the bedroom, flinging the door open and picking the tray up as she marched inside.

She went over to the windows and drew the curtains, sending the gray light of the new morning spilling into the room. She decided right then and there that the two of them would move into Adam's far more spacious quarters in the West Wing, at least until he was half this size again. From the bed, Adam huffed a little growl and rolled over, so Belle spoke loudly and clearly to him.

"I believe the best manner of approaching all this is penance," she said. "Your average person in the village understands the concept, even if they don't live it. The idea of a prince - whose heavy taxation and sour temper are now well remembered - making restitution? It's quite a notion. Père Robert can speak on the matter at church; it's all quite appropriate. I mean to speak with as many people individually as I can, and Mrs. Potts will come with me to -"

"Belle." His low voice was thick with sleep as he pushed himself up onto the pillows. "How long have you been awake?"

"I dunno. Hour and a half?" Belle said lightly. She went to the tray of food and lifted copper tureen of porridge to bring to Adam. "Use the spoon, please," she warned him.

"Just once, I think I'd like to take care of you instead of the other way round," the prince grumbled.

"You're welcome," Belle said meaningfully. "And I'm not taking care of you; we are eating breakfast and discussing strategy. This is a morning meeting is what it is."

Adam spooned porridge into his mouth, the spoon looking minuscule and awkward in his hand. He dropped the spoon from his clawed grasp and just managed to catch it before it fell into the tureen of porridge. He finally huffed and set the spoon on the table beside the bed. As Belle pulled up her boudoir stool and started eating her own food, Adam brought the bowl to his lips and slurped it quietly. Belle smiled a little, remembering the way they'd done this with soup. She continued using her own spoon, though, as she reiterated,

"So, I think our plan of action is to enlist the help of Père Robert at the beginning, then just me, then Mrs. Potts going with me… we need to convince people not to despise the concept of a beastly prince well before we put one before them."

"Do you really think it could work?" Adam asked, setting down his empty bowl and swiping at his enormous, fur-covered face with his paw. Belle balked a little and said,

"There's Plague coming. It must work. There's no option to fail. Imagine if Chip got sick and died because we didn't try hard enough with this. Imagine if I got sick and -"

"No. No, I will not imagine that." Adam snapped. His bright blue eyes flashed oddly, and Belle sighed as she set her own bowl of porridge down beside his. She covered his paw with her hand, the bones and sinew and fur feeling at once strange and familiar.

"All I'm saying is that if Agathe's right about the Plague - and I suspect she is - then you don't know who could be taken victim. Don't you want to minimize any risk of -"

"Stop. Please. Why are you talking like this? What's the matter with you?" Adam's voice was sharp and angry then, and Belle found herself frowning at him as she pulled her hand back and stood.

"I'm going to go write a letter to Père Robert and send it by horseman at once," she announced. "I won't wait for a reply; I'll let him know that I'm coming to town tomorrow. And I'll take a cart from here. It's important that none of this seem overwhelming to the townspeople. I'll meet with him to discuss everything, and after I come back tomorrow, we'll talk about it again. I think that, until then, you should focus your mind on something else."

"Like what?" Adam demanded, and Belle shrugged. She glanced out the window at the soft, chilly rain that had filled the November sky.

"I always like a little bite in the morning air," she declared. "I'll be out on the covered veranda near the ballroom. The one with the iron benches. I'll bring a book, and you can read aloud to me, just like you did on the way from Italy. You should clean yourself up and dress nicely; it'll help you feel more…"

"Human," he finished for her, pulling the blankets back and heaving himself out of the bed. He glanced around the room and said, "I think we ought to move you into the West Wing."

"I was thinking the same thing," Belle said. She smirked and added, "At least until you aren't shoving me off the bed just by lying on it."

"You can… you can stay in there after I'm myself again, too, you know." Adam's mouth twitched a little. "I know I'd first told you never to go there, but things are different now. And I know… well, you know, my mother always had a separate bedchamber from my father, but they weren't… they didn't love each other, I don't think. Not really."

Belle gave him the warmest look she could, and she moved to stand between his legs as he perched himself on the edge of the bed. She ran her hands down over his thick arms and touched her cheek to the warm fur on his face.

"I'm sorry you didn't have love modeled for you," she said, thinking of how much her father had loved her mother even after she'd gone. "But I love you, more than I ever thought I could love anybody."

"Even like this?" he asked, and she met the only part of him that stayed constant - his eyes. She nodded, kissing the flat bridge of his nose.

"Even like this."

* * *

"Do you know, before and just after we were married, you were helping me learn to be human again?"

Belle turned around at the sound of Adam's voice coming out onto the veranda. He sat beside her on the iron bench, having obviously washed up before putting on a dark red velvet ensemble.

"Now," he continued, "you're helping me accept being… this. How is it, Belle, that you manage to make me so very comfortable in any skin?"

She shrugged. "It's your soul I love, and all I can do is to try and show you that your soul doesn't change with the aesthetic."

He sighed and looked out over the rain-soaked gardens. It was cold enough that Belle had put on leather gloves and a dark red cloak, and she laughed a little as she noted to Adam,

"We match." He seemed confused, so she held the end of her cape up against Adam's frock coat and smiled. "It's Red Day, apparently."

"Oh. Great minds and all that," Adam said. "Did you send a letter to Père Robert?"

"No. I felt too badly about sending a messenger in this weather. The roads will be dangerous. I think it's important that I meet with Père Robert as soon as possible, so he'll just have to deal with my unexpected arrival tomorrow or the day after. Whenever I can get a horse safely on the mud. I'll just ride; a cart would require me to let the roads bake out, and that won't happen for a few days at least."

"You're very practical," the prince grumbled. "I wish my mind was as practical as yours. What are you reading?"

He took her book from her before she could answer, and he rolled his eyes as he read the gold wording from the spine. "Romeo and Juliet. Again?"

"Always," she grinned. Then, as if to rub salt in the figurative wound, she said, "I had left off just there… Act one, Scene five. Will you read it to me?"

"How am I meant to read a play aloud?" Adam demanded, and Belle grinned as she shut her eyes.

"All right, then. You read Romeo's parts, and I'll recite Juliet's."

"Don't you need to see the book for that?" she heard him ask, but she shut her head.

"I have the whole thing memorized."

"Of course you do." Adam growled quietly and then cleared his throat as he began to read the scene. "_If I profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss._"

Belle froze, realizing just how meaningful this particular scene was given their circumstances. Her breath shook a little as she opened her eyes and studied Adam's beastly face. "_Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this, for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss._"

The prince stared at Belle for a long moment before turning his pale eyes back to the page. "_Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?_"

"_Ay, pilgrim_," said Belle, reaching out to put her hand on Adam's enormous sleeve. "_Lips that they must use in prayer._"

Adam shut his eyes for a moment, the little copy of the book trembling in his paws. He used a claw to turn the page, and his deep voice was tight as he said, "_O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair._"

Belle stood from where she'd been sitting, and Adam's eyes went wide with surprise as she pushed the book into one of his hands and put her arms around his incredibly broad shoulders. "_Saints do not move,_" she recited, "_but grant for prayers' sake._"

"_Then do not move_," Adam read, "_while my prayer's effect I take._"

He set the book down and put his paws on either side of Belle's face. She leaned forward and kissed him, just like the stage direction in the play told Romeo and Juliet to do. She touched her lips to his, and when he gasped in surprise, she snuck her tongue bravely into his mouth. She let his fang graze her tongue and her lips as she pressed a firm kiss onto his mouth, and his grip on her cheek tightened almost painfully. His eyes were searching and anxious as she pulled a few inches away, but somehow he managed to find enough breath to pick up the book, glance at the page, and say,

"_Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged._"

Belle smirked. "_Then have my lips the sin they took._"

"_Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!_" Adam read, his voice shaking like a leaf. "_Give me my sin again._ And… and then it says they kiss again."

"More ardently this time, I should think," Belle insisted. She took the book from her prince's grasp and set it on the bench beside him. This time when she kissed him, she held nothing back. She kissed him just like she'd been doing for months, with tongues running over roofs of mouths and lips being dragged carefully between teeth. He tasted the same - dark and savory - and his lips felt very much the same. The size and shape of him was a little different, and when she brought her hands to his cheeks, there was soft fur beneath her palms. But that wasn't so very different from his silky beard, and when he grunted with pleasure, there was no mistaking this was Adam. Her Adam. Her prince.

* * *

"It's much, much too windy, Belle. If you weren't planning on going yourself, I'd say -"

"This is important, Adam!" Belle insisted, but even as she spoke, a great gust of wind thrashed rainwater against the glass lining the West Wing drawing room. Belle huffed and put her hands on her hips, and the prince gave her a serious look.

"If you got injured or lost or stranded," he said, "I wouldn't be able to help you properly. Not without putting both of us at serious risk. Please, Belle. Wait for these storms to let up. Please."

Belle's face softened as more rain was whipped violently against the glass. "I suppose one day doesn't make an enormous difference in three months," she admitted, "but we need to move quickly. I'll go tomorrow. It'll be better by then, I'm sure."

"Thank you," Adam said in a conciliatory voice. He and Belle stayed in the drawing room where the enchanted rose had once been, where he had died on the ground and she'd cried and said she loved him. He studied the floor, the walls, the windows, and he knew his voice sounded off as he said, "That night you left, Belle, I died long before the gunshots."

Belle's face turned to the spot on the floor where Gaston's final shot had done him in, and she shivered visibly. "I thought I'd lost you forever," she said, "before I'd ever actually had you. What did it feel like?"

"Getting shot?" asked the prince, confused because he'd already explained that to her, but Belle shook her head.

"Dying."

"Oh." Adam shrugged and shook his head. "One minute you were staring down at me, and then I shut my eyes and was asleep. Then I was human again. I don't remember anything in between."

"No harps and angels?" Belle asked with a tiny smirk, and Adam shrugged again.

"Sorry to disappoint you. I was… asleep. That's all."

"Interesting." Belle walked out of the drawing room, back into the bedroom where she'd nursed him back to health after he'd been attacked by wolves. She dragged her fingers down the thick bedpost and yawned a little. She gave him an apologetic look. "I didn't really sleep last night."

Adam glanced out the windows at the rainstorm, and he asked, "Anxious about the weather?"

"Actually, I… had a dream," Belle admitted, her cheeks going scarlet, "and then I woke up and the dream was beside me."

Adam's heart thumped in his broad chest, and he pawed his way down into the bedroom to stand before her. He threw up a furry eyebrow and asked, "Was it like that dream you had a few months ago? The one where I had you pinned against the wall?"

Belle shut her eyes. "Something like that."

Adam let his teeth dig into his bottom lip, eyeing Belle up and down and then looking at the paws where his human hands had been. He frowned as he poked one of his claws against the pad of his own thumb, and he noted,

"If I touch you with these claws, Belle, I'm going to do some serious damage."

"I know," she sighed, opening her eyes and tipping her head. "Maybe you could just… erm… maybe if you just lay on your back and I -"

"That part would hurt you, too, probably." Adam spoke quickly then, feeling very embarrassed. He knew her body well, and he knew the body he'd been damned to possess in this form. His member as the Beast was entirely too large; she'd be miserable at best and wounded at worst. He stared at the floor as he added, "I'm not putting my fangs anywhere near… and your mouth wouldn't fit… can we stop talking about this?"

"It's fine," she assured him, stepping up to him and putting one hand on his chest. Her other hand drifted to his paw, her fingers dragging over his sharp claws as she said, "Three months isn't that long. I went years as a young woman before being physical with you. You went years without a woman. We'll both be fine for three months."

Suddenly an angry sense of need came over Adam, and he seized Belle by the waist and shoved her hard against the wall. His movements happened in a flash; he could move so much more quickly like this than as an ordinary man. He lifted Belle up easily, for when he was like this she seemed to weigh nothing at all. She yelped with surprise, and for a moment her pretty brown eyes looked hungry. But as he pinned her hard against the wall, letting her feel the burgeoning lump in his breeches, the look on her face shifted to fear.

"It isn't that I don't want you like this," she whispered, her voice shaking, "but it's as you said. Claws and fangs and… and that bit. I think I might really get hurt."

The prince panted a bit as he stared down at her, but he nodded and set her down on the ground. He took a step back, very self-conscious of how he'd started to go hard, and he turned away.

"Three months isn't very long," he said, just as she'd done. He stared at the place on the floor where he'd died again, and from behind him, Belle promised him,

"I can wait very patiently. I promise. And in the meantime, I'll fall asleep listening to your heartbeat. The same heartbeat I heard in Verona."

Adam's lips curled up a little bit, and he nodded silently as the rain outside whipped and thrashed the windows.

* * *

"Are you sure this horse is all right?" Adam asked, and Belle rolled her eyes from where she rode astride with her skirts hiked up and a cloak falling about her.

"Don't worry. Onyx is a good mount. Very calm; wouldn't spook even if you wanted him to."

She patted the black crest of the gelding she'd chosen for the day. Adam stayed a few steps away despite Belle's assurance that the horse was good-natured.

"You could always just demand that that witch give you Phillippe back," Adam suggested, and Belle smirked as she said,

"I don't think it's wise to poke her with a stick. Do you? Besides, I think Phillippe's happy with her. He was the last time I saw him, at least."

The prince pursed his lips, dragging his clawed paw over his long mane of hair as he told Belle, "Thank you for doing this. Stay safe."

"I'll be back tonight," Belle promised him. She reached down, and he let her squeeze his paw tightly. She squeezed her heels against Onyx, and he started off into a trot. Belle glanced over her shoulder as they rode out of the gate to see that Adam was still standing at the bottom of the winding staircase.

The air was brisk and wet as she rode toward Villeneuve. The roads were still muddy, and from time to time Onyx padded through a puddle that Belle knew was throwing dark speckles onto her cloak and drawers. She was sitting atop one petticoat that she'd pulled between her legs, but she knew she'd have to walk Onyx into town if she didn't want people to chatter about how indecently the princess rode her horse.

She relished the feel of the breeze on her cheeks, the sound of Onyx's hooves thudding on the ground. By the time she was just outside Villeneuve, the sun was high in the sky and the frigid morning had given way to an almost pleasant midday. Belle hopped out of the saddle and took Onyx's reins in her hand as she walked into town. Her horse's hooves clacked on the cobblestones, and at once Belle could sense that her identity in this town had changed.

With months to ponder what they remembered and who everyone was, Belle had become an actual princess. Even in the rough-spun wool dress she wore today, she earned herself curtsies and bows and respectful nods from the same people who used to mock her. Belle tried desperately not to mentally point out the hypocrisy. The entire point of all this was to stop the judgment. So she inquired after Madame Renard's grandchildren, and she even gave a pleasant smile to Faustine Coulmier, who had flirted so openly with the prince before their trip to Italy.

Belle stopped at her father's old house, tying Onyx up outside where there was hay and water for the village's horses. Her heart raced as she climbed the stairs up to the house, and she paused before opening the door. She shut her eyes and whispered,

"This is for you, Papa."

She pushed open the door to the house, and when she saw what was going on inside, her eyes instantly welled with tears. It was a Saturday, so she wasn't surprised that the village's children weren't in school. She just hadn't been expecting ten of them to be sitting on chairs and stools and even giant pillows on the floor. She hadn't been expecting to walk into the house and find the children's noses stuck in books. So she had to fight back tears as all their little faces turned toward her and she shut the door.

"Madame Belle!" cried little Madeleine, the girl Belle had been teaching to read before she'd ever met Adam. She flew to her feet, and the other children followed suit. They gave awkward little bows and curtsies, and Belle curtsied right back. Suddenly she thought that perhaps today's meeting didn't need to be with Père Robert. Perhaps, she thought, the first step in all of this was the children. Perhaps she was exactly where she was meant to be.

"Will you all tell me what you're reading?" Belle asked. One little boy, no older than seven, held up his book and proudly declared,

"I'm reading _Paradise Lost._ It's about the fall of Man."

"And I'm reading_ As You Like It_," declared a girl of perhaps eleven. Belle's throat went tight as she nodded.

"Shakespeare is my favorite."

"I'm reading _Manon Lescaut_," said a boy, the eldest in the room, perhaps thirteen or fourteen. Madeleine rolled her eyes and whispered loudly,

"There's a prostitute in that one. That's why André likes it."

Belle couldn't help but laugh at that. She pulled up a chair and gestured for the children to sit. "Do you all like reading?" she asked, and the children all nodded frantically.

"Thank you for the books," squeaked a little girl, by far the smallest one present. She looked just like Madeline. Sisters, Belle thought. She smiled and told the girl,

"You're very welcome. It brings me great joy to know you're all enjoying them so much. They wouldn't do much good sitting unread in our library at the castle."

"Do you like being a princess?" asked Madeleine, and Belle shrugged amiably.

"I just like being me. I think I'm the same whether I'm a girl from Villeneuve or a princess in a castle. People don't change just because their titles or homes change, right?" The children shook their head, and Belle decided to seize her chance. She leaned forward in her chair and said furtively, "If I tell you all something very important, can you vow to keep it a secret for now?" They all nodded eagerly, but Belle said, "Cross your hearts!"

The children all seemed very serious as they drew crosses over their hearts and set their books down. Belle sighed, unsure of how to phrase all of this.

"I'm sure you all remember when there was a lot of fear in the village about there being a beast in the castle."

"But I heard it was the prince himself all along," said the boy called André. "We were told that he'd been put under a curse for having been cruel, but that the curse was broken and he was himself again."

"You're very right, André," Belle nodded. "Now, what if I told you all that he'd been cursed again, that he was a beast again? Would you be able to see him as a prince?"

"I'd be afraid," admitted Madeleine, "but I felt awfully bad for Caliban. It wasn't right how they treated him."

"Caliban," Belle repeated. "You've read _The Tempest?_"

Madeleine nodded enthusiastically, and Belle smiled. "Well, it is rather like Caliban. And like Sebastian. You see, the prince has been put under a spell again, because the people of Villeneuve need to show they can respect and love someone no matter what they look like. That's an important lesson for us all to learn, don't you think?"

The children nodded, though they seemed uneasy. Suddenly Belle had an awful, grim vision of the Plague coming through the town and claiming at least one of the little ones before her. Her stomach twisted and her resolve turned to steel.

"It isn't time to tell your parents yet about the prince's curse," Belle said, "but can you promise me something, my friends? Can you promise me that when the prince comes through our town, you'll bow and curtsy to him, just like you did when I came into the library?"

"Even if he's a beast?" asked the littlest girl, and Belle nodded.

"Even then."

"I promise," the little girl replied, and Madeleine crossed her heart.

"Promise," she said. The other children did the same, and Belle smiled a little. Perhaps, she thought, this exercise wasn't doomed. Perhaps the children would save them all.

* * *

When Adam awoke in the middle of the night, it was to the sound of Belle huffing angrily beside him. The prince scowled and half-opened his eyes as he demanded in a bleary voice,

"You all right?"

He didn't get an answer, so he started to roll over in the opulent, gilded bed. He couldn't imagine what was nagging at Belle at this hour. She'd had a successful visit with the village's children and with Père Robert. There was real hope that perhaps the people might prove themselves not to be judgmental. But Belle seemed deeply perturbed as she stared up at the ceiling.

"What's the matter?" Adam asked, trying to keep his tired voice gentle.

"Nothing. I'm fine," Belle said through gritted teeth. Her cheeks were dark, he could see, and her fists were balled up on the red coverlet. Adam frowned.

"Obviously not," he argued. "What's the matter?"

She shut her eyes and swallowed hard. "If these dreams don't stop, it's going to be an awfully long three months."

"Oh." He felt a strange flush go through him at that. He stroked at her arm with his knuckle, but as he eyed his sharp claws, he thought of how easily he'd torn through curtains and paintings, and suddenly the idea of wounding Belle from the inside out made him feel ill. He pulled his hand away and said quietly, "I'm sorry I can't… that we can't…"

"It's fine," Belle repeated. "Let's go back to sleep."

She wasn't going to fall asleep again any time soon, Adam knew. He put his lips into a line and informed her, "I would be the last one to judge you if you… you know, took care of yourself."

Belle's eyes sprang open, and she gave him a shocked look in the dim light of the candles around them. She sounded indignant as she said, "You want me to - to do that? To touch myself? Here? In front of you?"

"Don't act so scandalized," Adam teased her. "I know what you look like and feel like and taste like down there."

Belle's eyes went round as saucers for a moment. Then she shut her eyes again, and when she opened them, she sounded almost wounded. "It's like an itch I can't scratch. Like an ache that won't go away. You lying beside me, warm and whole and _you_, is only making it worse. You're so close, but I can't have you."

"Belle." He pulled one of her fists away from the blanket, gently pushing her wrist beneath the blankets. He wasn't teasing her now as he said, "Go ahead. Your own hand won't tear your body to shreds, so go ahead."f

Belle sighed, but as she shifted a little, he could tell she was pulling up the hem of her nightgown. She seemed genuinely embarrassed as she said, "Don't look at me, though."

Adam raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "All right, then."

He started to turn back around, but Belle's left hand clapped onto his shoulder, and she said a little breathlessly, "Actually… do look at me. Please."

He struggled not to smirk as he turned back around. He was going a little hard between his legs, just from talking about all of this, but he ignored the feeling as his eyes locked onto Belle's. He brought one paw up to her face and cradled her cheek in his hand, and she let out a soft little moan. He couldn't see her hand moving, but he could tell by her rickety breath that she was already touching herself.

"When I can do that for you," he told her seriously, "I'm going to make you finish over and over and over again until you can't think straight."

"Oh." Belle's eyes fluttered shut, and her breath hitched. She turned toward him a little, and he could see her arm and shoulder moving. Suddenly his cock went fully hard, blood rushing from his head as he said in a tight voice,

"When I can use my mouth on you again, I'm going to make your back arch. Make you cry out for mercy in between repeating my name."

"Adam," she whispered, and the syllables sounded so sweet on her lips that his cock twitched and ached. Adam lay on his back and reached beneath the blankets, turning his head toward Belle. Their eyes met again, and he admitted,

"I can't help it. You're too much."

"Do it," she murmured, her voice a low whine. Adam peeled the blankets back a little, far less ashamed of his member than he'd expected to be. If it hadn't been Belle, he never would have shown this most vulnerable part of his beastly form. But she loved him, even like this. She wanted him, even like this, even though he couldn't give himself to her. He could give her this. They could give this, lying side by side and doing this, to one another.

He stroked himself with quick jerking motions, knowing he wasn't going to last long with her beside him. Belle snuggled up against him, and now he was acutely aware of the way her fingers fluttered and pumped against her own body. He encouraged her to rub herself up against him, and suddenly she moved her hand away from herself. She wrapped her leg around Adam's and started to move, grinding herself on his hip as her right arm flung over his chest. She stared him right in the eyes as she ground herself onto him, and Adam let out a choked little noise.

It was so much to absorb - the way he was pleasuring himself freely in front of her, the way she was staring at him with hungry, tired eyes. The way her body felt, wet and tight and soft, as she moved against his hip. It was too much to bear, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he came. He'd be absolutely covered in his seed, he knew. It would be all over his fur and he'd have to scrub at himself for ten minutes to get it off. He didn't care. He let it leap onto his belly, letting out a feral growl of completion as the heat of pleasure took him over.

He opened his eyes to see Belle had put her head onto his chest. She squeezed him as tightly as she could, feeling and looking smaller than ever as her body contracted tightly around him. She huffed and panted desperately as she finished, her fingers snarling in Adam's fur as she let out a muffled cry on his chest. She stayed like that, wrapped around him like a vine, for a long moment, until finally she rolled over onto her back and shut her eyes.

"Thank you," she whispered, "for letting me… well, I don't think I couldn't have gone a full three months with nothing at all. I'm entirely too attracted to you."

"You don't have to thank me for that," Adam scoffed, moving carefully to stand from the bed. He managed to make his way to the wash stand without incident, and he wet a cloth and started scrubbing at his fur.

"_Sometime all full with feasting on your sight_," she said from behind him. "_And by and by clean starved for a look_."

"Sonnet 75," the prince said knowingly. He turned round and raised an eyebrow. "_Save what is had or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, or gluttoning on all, or all away._"

"It'll feel better after three months," Belle said, propping herself against the pillows. She nodded and said in a sure voice, "Having you inside of me, your mouth on my neck, my hand around you. It'll all feel even better after a little while of not being able to have it."

"It doesn't have to be the full three months," Adam reminded her, "so let's try and get those village people bowing to their beastly prince as soon as possible."

* * *

"So, Plumette," Belle began as she packed bread and cheese into a basket two weeks later, "Have you got baby names in mind?"

"Lumière likes René for a boy and Renée for a girl," Plumette laughed, and Belle grinned over her shoulder.

"So 'Ruh-Nay,' in any case, then?"

"He is so excited," Plumette declared. "I think he'll be a good and playful father. The Master would be a good father, too!"

"Someday, perhaps," Belle said in a light voice. "Mrs. Potts, this basket is ready to -"

"Pardon me, Madame," said a voice from the doorway to the kitchen, "but this just came by messenger."

Belle frowned as she walked over to Cogsworth, thanking him as she took the wax-sealed scroll from his hand. She broke the seal and unfurled the scroll, and she read aloud to everyone in the kitchen,

_"Madame Belle,_

_I write to urgently inform you that the children of the village have been chatting - to their parents - about the fact that His Grace is currently in an inhuman form. Monsieur LeFou and I have managed to quell most of the disbelief or outrage, but I would advise that you attempt to get here as quickly as possible to prepare the people for the truth._

_Warmest regards,_

_Père Robert."_

Everyone in the kitchen stared at one another for a very long time, and Belle finally said in a numb voice,

"Cogsworth, please go fetch the prince. Please make sure he's dressed as elegantly as possible. I'm taking him to the village."

* * *

"This still seems like a bad idea," Adam said, hunched over and profoundly uncomfortable after five hours in a too-small carriage. "You've had many good ideas, Belle, but this is not one of them, I don't think."

"We have to try," Belle insisted. "If it gets dangerous, get on Onyx and get away quickly."

They'd brought the calm black gelding as a backup, in case the people reacted so badly that Adam needed an immediate escape.

"These people marched to my home intent on killing me," Adam reminded Belle. "They shoved you into a cart to be hauled off to an insane asylum. How could they ever be good enough to bow to a beast?"

"If you want the benefit of the doubt, you need to give it first," Belle informed him crisply. "And, anyway, even the most handsome prince must earn an obeisance."

The ground beneath the carriage wheels shifted to the clatter of cobblestones, and Adam knew they were very near Villeneuve. He gulped, feeling properly nauseated, as he said,

"Remember that if you get the impression things will turn ugly, I'll just stay in here."

"Ye of so very little faith," Belle muttered, pulling back the curtain on her own window and looking outside. When the carriage stopped, Adam could tell they were near the church. Belle flashed him one last nervous smile and leaned to touch her cheek to his. She kissed the hard bridge of his nose and murmured, "I love you. With all that I am."

"_I would not wish any companion in the world but you_," Adam quoted in response. Belle quickly slipped out of the carriage, and Adam peeled back the curtain on his window and pushed the glass open just enough for him to see and hear what was happening while remaining hidden.

Belle stepped out into the square where a curious little crowd had gathered, and a stringy woman demanded,

"It's not true, is it, Madame Belle?"

"Tell me what you've heard," Belle said wisely. LeFou, the onetime companion of Gaston himself, stepped forward and said,

"The children were saying that the prince was under a curse again. I told everyone that was silly nonsense, but -"

"No. It's true," Belle declared, eliciting gasps from the townspeople and making Adam's stomach turn with anxiety. A little girl tugged on her mother's skirts and cried,

"I told you, _Maman!_ But it's like Monsieur LeFou said, isn't it?"

"What did Monsieur LeFou say?" Belle asked. LeFou cleared his throat and said carefully,

"I simply pointed out that he whole village went on a crusade with torches in hand, only to discover that we'd all been under a curse, and that it was the prince the whole time. Seems silly to get riled up over someone's looks. That's all."

Belle nodded as the villagers whispered among themselves.

"You all gladly bow and curtsy to me," she pointed out. "Me. Belle. The strange girl with her head jammed into a book. Why? Why do you respect me now?"

"Because you're our princess, Madame," said a man with a tight, awkward voice. Belle shrugged,

"Your prince is your prince no matter his face. You bow before the odd girl from the village. Will you bow before a beast?"

No one answered her for a long moment, until Monsieur LeFou said rather proudly,

"Yes. I will."

"So will I!" cried the little girl at her mother's skirts.

"I suppose if his soul is the same," pondered a woman aloud, and Père Robert interjected sharply,

"His soul is the same. It is the same prince. To save our own selves, to earn grace upon our own souls, we must all recognize that."

"I want to meet him," said the little girl, and Belle grinned.

"What an excellent idea, Madeleine." She turned back to the carriage, her eyes peering through Adam's window. "Your Grace… please, will you greet your subjects?"

Adam froze for a moment, unable to obey her. Finally he managed to put his hand on the carriage door and push it open, climbing into the cold afternoon in his fine blue clothes.

There were many gasps, and one woman at the back of the crowd appeared to faint. Even LeFou, the one who had stuck up for the idea of respecting the Beast, seemed utterly horrified.

But the little girl, the one Belle had called Madeleine, came striding right up to stand before Adam. Her face was unafraid, even as her mother snatched at her to try and keep her back. Madeleine said up to Adam,

"Your Grace. On behalf of the children of Villeneuve, I want to thank you for the books in our library."

Adam's eyes burned fiercely all of a sudden, but he managed to nod and say, "I would like to bring more books to the library. May I come by and do that sometime?"

"Oh, yes, Your Grace. Please, will you bring more Shakespeare?" The entire town was now standing in utter silence, watching little Madeleine speak to the Beast. Adam nodded again and said,

"If the children of Villeneuve want more Shakespeare, they shall have every last play."

Madeleine grinned broadly and dipped into a deep but unpracticed curtsy. Adam's heart raced as he bowed in return. Suddenly a dozen or so more children had trotted up to stand beside Madeleine, all of them giving the best bows and curtsies they could manage.

"Your little scholars," Adam said to Belle, whose brown eyes had gone visibly wet. LeFou stepped up then, and he said to Adam,

"Your Grace… this town treated you unkindly the last time we saw you."

"I am made to understand that you switched sides rather quickly, Monsieur LeFou," Adam pointed out, loudly enough for all to hear. "All is forgiven on my front. I hope the town might say the same for me. I have been a less than benevolent prince in the past."

"The way is forward, Your Grace." LeFou bowed, and Père Robert quickly followed suit and agreed,

"Always forward."

Things stalled then for a long moment as the rest of the townspeople skeptically stared at one another. But the little girl called Madeleine whirled round and shouted angrily to the villagers,

"This is your prince! Show His Grace the respect he is due!"

The girl's mother dipped into a curtsy then, after being shot a death glare by little Madeleine. The other children shouted encouragement, and one by one the people of Villeneuve dipped and bent before their prince.

In the back corner of the crowd, a beautiful woman stood beside a stately white horse. Agathe and Philippe. Adam met her eyes, and she was the very last one to curtsy. Adam stared at her as she rose, and then he dipped into a formal bow.

"Very soon," he announced to the villagers, "A hospital will be built near the castle. If anyone you love is ill, bring them to the hospital, where they will find healing at no cost. Madame Belle will come to announce its opening… after we bring some more Shakespeare to the library, of course."

* * *

"It seems more than a little odd to thank you for all of this," Adam said to Agathe, "so I don't think I will."

Belle watched as Agathe turned her lips up a little and said serenely, "Behold the repentant libertine, beloved even in this form by the basest of his people."

Adam rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Just tell me when the hospital will be built. And when I'll be myself again."

"Self," Agathe repeated. "Such a fluid thing, isn't it? You will find the hospital in one week's time, just south of the castle, nestled safely in the woods."

"And who will… you know, heal people?" Belle asked. She flashed Agathe a skeptical expression and asked, "Are you conducting a hiring process?"

"The patients will receive care from the finest doctors in all of France," Agathe said assuredly. "Now. Your Grace, if you'd like me to change you back?"

Belle and Adam moved behind her father's house a bit more, out of sight of the mostly-vanished crowd of villagers. Belle studied Adam's large, flat nose, his fur-covered cheeks, and his enormous clawed paws. She realized she might not ever see him like this again, and for some bizarre reason, that sent a spike of grief through her.

"I'll be back in a moment," Agathe said knowingly. She disappeared before Belle could reply. Belle turned her attention back to Adam and reached up to put her hands on his cheeks. He gave her a meaningful look and said,

"It is a good thing that I get to be human again."

"I know," Belle nodded, but she found herself running her hands down her arms and planting them on his broad chest. He brought her knuckles to his mouth, dragging the smooth fronts of her fangs over her skin before kissing her there.

"Tonight," he said very quietly, "I will show you why it is a good thing that I'll be human again."

"All right." Belle stared at his horns, at his ears and his nose and his fangs, and she swallowed hard as she said, "I'm just trying to cement it all in my mind. I only had a short while of you like this before we married. And now just over two weeks. Somehow, my mind is panicking."

"Belle." He tipped his head and sighed. "It's always me, no matter what, isn't it? Let me be blond, will you?"

Belle smiled and took a step back from him, for Agathe had walked back around the house and had her hand extended. Belle staggered backward a little as Agathe's golden spell washed over Adam. His body lifted off the ground and his back arched a bit, and she watched as the fur and claws and fangs gave way to his soft human skin. As he landed slowly back on the ground, his elegant blue clothing scaled back down for him, Belle turned to see Agathe had gone again. She smirked up at Adam's bright blue eyes and said,

"There's my handsome human."

"Let's go home," he suggested, taking a step toward Belle. He brushed his thumb under her eye and said, "I have to tell you, I'm very glad not to have to wait the full three months."

Belle smirked and covered his hand with hers, nodding. "Home sounds good."

* * *

It was past dark by the time they got back to the castle, and the servants were so elated to see their prince human again that an elaborate dinner was prepared and served. Belle did not want to express the slightest hind of being ungrateful, so she smiled and thanked her way through escargot and potatoes and roast duck and sweet carrots and a pastry. She was too full and very impatient by the time Lumière supervised their plates being hauled away.

"Oh, I am just so 'appy to see you yourself again, Master," Lumière said, seeming blissfully unaware of the way Adam and Belle were staring hard at one another across the dining room table. Lumière asked carefully, "Would it be possible, now that some of these little 'angups 'ave been corrected, for Plumette and I to have a little wedding celebration?"

Belle snapped to rights and gave Lumière a warm look. "I would love to help plan," she said. "Anything you want to do. I'm sure Père Robert will come and perform the ceremony in the chapel here, if you'd like."

"Ah! That would be spectacular," Lumière declared. "And my love will look so beautiful as a bride. Almost as beautiful as she already looks as a mother."

Adam was still staring intently at Belle, but he did manage to say to Lumière, "I'm sure it will be a wonderful party."

Lumière seemed to pick up on the tension between the prince and his wife, and he gave a knowing little laugh as he backed out of the dining room and said, "We'll all be… you know, in rooms that are not this one. 'Ave a good night. Goodbye!"

Once the door had shut, Belle stared down the table, through the dim lights of the candles and sconces, studying Adam's brilliant blue eyes.

"_Eternity was in our eyes and lips,_" she murmured, and his gaze flashed as she began to quote Antony and Cleopatra. Belle rose from her chair and continued, "_Bliss in our brows' bent, none our parts so poor but was a race of heaven. They are so still._"

"You can manage to like me this way, then?" Adam asked, drumming his fingers on the table as Belle approached. Her heart began to pound in her chest as she approached, and she admitted in a quiet voice,

"I don't think I can make it all the way up to the West Wing."

"No need to wait," Adam said, pulling up to stand before her. She reached up to stroke at his blond-bearded cheeks, to touch his hard chest, and she let out a shaking sigh. Adam's hands went to her own face, his fingers snaring in her silky hair as he leaned down to kiss her.

She groaned softly against him, for without his fangs, his kisses were deeper and more bold. His tongue lathed over her bottom lip as he snarled a little against her. She realized then that he would always be a hybrid of some kind, to the marrow of his bones. The Beast would never leave him, not really. And even when he'd looked a beast, he'd been a man inside. It didn't matter, she knew, if he was big and broad or passionate like this. Either way, he was her Adam.

He pushed her toward the wall, his hand cupping her breast through her bodice and squeezing rather roughly. Belle gasped as her back hit the wall, and her own hands flew to the front of his breeches.

"I'll take you here," he whispered, hiking up her skirts as his hand frantically went between her legs, "and I'll take you in our bed. And I'll take you on the rug. And in the bed again, and again until you plead with me to let you sleep."

"But I don't want to sleep," Belle protested, tipping her head against the wall when his fingers pulsed against her entrance. She pulled his hard cock out with shaking hands and insisted, "I want you to make love to me until the sun rises."

"That sounds splendid," Adam said, and he crushed her mouth with his again.

* * *

He only barely been exaggerating with all of his talk. Belle lay asleep beside him, hours after dinner, both of them spent beyond measure after making love on the wall in the dining room, then twice on the bed in the West Wing. Now she slept, peaceful as a dove where she was curled up against him. But Adam couldn't sleep. He'd wanted her so badly when he'd been the Beast. He'd longed to touch her, and he'd never hated his claws more than when he'd been unable to do so. Now he had his fingers back, and he'd made very good use of them. Still, he wanted more. He shut his eyes and tried in vain to sleep, reciting from The Tempest in a whisper to calm himself.

"_Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,_" he said very quietly, breathing in the rosy smell of Belle beside him. "_Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, that, if I then had waked after long sleep, will make me sleep again…_"

He breathed slowly and deeply in the silence for a while, adoring the feel of Belle pressed naked against him. She'd told him it was a fine day for him to finish inside of her, but he'd probably taken too much advantage of that. He stroked at her back gently and was surprised to hear her bleary voice finish Caliban's line.

_"And then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again._"

"I didn't mean to wake you," Adam murmured, leaning to kiss the top of her head. She needed her rest, he knew, for he'd plundered her so roughly in the dining room and then had taken an eternity thrusting into her from behind on their bed. But she met his eyes and smiled a little.

"I dreamed of you."

"Of the Beast again?" Adam asked, and Belle shook her head.

"No. It was springtime, and we were walking through an apple orchard. You were blond. It was nice."

His chest twisted and ached for some reason, and he shrugged helplessly as he informed her, "I love you."

"You are a good man," she said, and it wasn't the first time she'd told him that. She pressed her hand to his bare chest and kissed him there. "The hospital will save lives. Madeleine and the other children in the village. Chip. They may all live because of you, because of what you've done. What you've taught people through your sacrifice."

"I am no saint," Adam argued, but Belle pushed herself up to face him and nodded a little.

"You are to me."

He kissed her, not caring one bit about the taste of sleep on her lips. She moved to straddle him, pressing her breasts against his chest and making him come alive at once. He went harder and harder as he ran his hands up and down her bare back, and when he reached a hand between them, Belle was already a little wet. She winced, though, and she explained apologetically,

"Little sore. I'm tired there."

He chuckled and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Sorry about that. Why don't you go back to sleep?"

Belle's hands went between them, her fingers drifting around his length as she gave him a dark stare. "I don't want to sleep."

She moved up and forward then, and as she sank down onto him, it seemed her satisfaction had overridden any lingering symptoms of overuse. She began to rock slowly, her movements far more leisurely than they'd done anything all night. She combed her fingers through Adam's blond hair, her body snug and wet and warm around his. Every time she rocked up and forward, he breathed in, and he exhaled when she went down and back. It developed into a smooth, steady rhythm in which their hands gently searched one another, their lips touched every now and then, and everything seemed to be synchronized.

"I would not have made it three months," Belle said finally, leaning forward and burying her face in the crook of Adam's neck as a quiet little climax washed over her. She hummed his name a few times, her breath warm beneath. Adam pulled Belle tightly against him, focusing on the feel of her breath and her hair and her skin. For some reason, the sensory combination sent his heart racing and made everything go tight between his legs.

"Belle," the prince groaned, squeezing Belle so tightly he worried he was hurting her. "Please don't leave me again."

He wasn't sure why those words came out of his mouth, and he was immediately embarrassed. But as his own climax crashed over him, as his seed pumped and jerked into Belle's body, she kissed his cheek and promised him,

"Don't worry. I'll never leave you again."

Adam couldn't answer her. He was too overcome, by attraction to her and love for her and the sheer physical bliss of finding completion. He kissed her, carefully and slowly, and when he pulled his mouth away at last, he whispered against her mouth,

"None of any of this would have happened without you. My freedom. My happiness. The library. The hospital. Do you realize how… how important you are to me?"

Belle seemed to be very near sleep as she breathed steadily on his shoulder. Her hand went to his cheek, and she rubbed her thumb over the hair of his beard.

"Without you, I wouldn't have dealt well at all with the loss of my father," she said, "nor would I have left France to see Italy. You're more important to me than you'll ever understand. _And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, compared with loss of thee, will not seem so._"

"But I won't lose you, nor you me," Adam insisted. Their bodies were still locked together, messy and sweaty, but he couldn't bring himself to pull Belle off of him. He kissed her cheek and let her fall asleep as he hummed a gentle little song he remembered from his youth.

He'd worn them both out with his endless insistence to take her body, though of course Belle had initiated this encounter. As he slipped out of her but kept her cradled against him, he realized he would never truly lose the Beast. That animalistic bit of him would always be there. And he would always be human, Prince Adam of Vendôme. But despite the knowledge that his true self existed regardless of his exterior, his new epiphany was far important.

Belle was his real constant. She was the anchor keeping him grounded to the reality of the villages he had so long ignored or mistreated. She was brilliant, a visionary and a thinker and a kind-hearted soul. She made him feel more human than anything else. And he wanted nothing more in all the world to spend every night like this, with her curled up against him, falling asleep flush against him. For tonight, at least, Adam didn't move her an inch. He tipped his head back against his lace-edged pillows and kissed her forehead, petting her hair as he joined her in sleep.

* * *

"It looks like a palace unto itself," Belle breathed, taking Adam's hand as she stepped out of the carriage. She shook her head in wonder as she gazed up at the hospital. It was a gray stone building with elegant straight lines and many windows that looked out upon the courtyard. It was three stories tall with garret windows beyond that, and the enormous entrance at the level of the gravel drive consisted of enormous double doors. Belle was, for a moment, amazed that Agathe had been able to build such a thing with her magic, but then she remembered that Agathe had managed to transfigure one man into a beast and another into a clock with relative ease.

"It certainly is impressive," Adam admitted, his shoes crunching on the gravel as he and Belle made their way to the front doors. There, they were met by a uniformed doorman who bowed and said,

"Your Grace. Madame. Our patron has arrived. Welcome."

There was something off, something ever-so-slightly not human about the way the doorman spoke, and for some reason Belle had a sudden worry that Agathe had done the reverse of what she'd done to Adam's castle. Perhaps, Belle thought, she'd crafted this hospital from the pebbles in the forest. Perhaps these employees were animals made human. She had no way of asking, and she didn't want to know. She just gave the doorman a little smile and received a very broad grin in response.

"Please come inside," the doorman said, "the head of medicine, Dr. Duval, is very excited to show you around."

"Oh. All right." Belle smiled and took Adam's hand rather casually, walking with him into the hospital building and allowing an attendant to take her heavy cloak. The first thing she noticed inside the hospital was a clean smell, not usually what one expected in a place full of sick people. The first patients had started arriving, Belle knew. The Plague had not yet come to the area around Villeneuve, but there were injuries to be healed and fevers to be brought down.

A warm-faced, middle-aged man came walking across the airy foyer and gave a respectful bow. "Madame Belle. Your Grace. My name is Dr. Duval; I've come from Paris to be the head of medicine here."

"May I ask," Adam said carefully, "what compelled you to come and work at our little country hospital?"

"The opportunity to start something new and fresh," said Dr. Duval, and Belle gave Adam a curious look. Dr. Duval gestured to his right and said, "May I give you the tour?"

"Yes. That would be wonderful," Belle nodded.

"Well, here to our right we find our injuries ward," said Dr. Duval. "At the moment, our only patient is one man from Villeneuve. He broke his femur falling from his horse."

Belle gasped, for that sounded like a horrific injury. She followed the doctor into the ward and saw tall, wide wooden shelves full of bottles and jars and bandages. There was one full of clean linens. The wide, comfortable-looking beds were spaced evenly, perhaps ten in all, and the large room had a fresh and airy feel.

"Even with the cold air, we open the windows for at least one hour per day," said Dr. Duval. "It's important to air out the diseases from the space."

Belle frowned but nodded. In one of the beds, she saw a man she recognized as Monsieur Coulmier. He was lying on his back, seemingly deep asleep, and Belle asked,

"Will he be all right?"

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Duval. "He's comfortable right now while his leg heals up. He'll be home and back to work within the week."

"Miraculous," Adam said, and when Belle met his eyes, she saw that his were wet. She squeezed his hand and said very firmly indeed,

"How proud I am of you, husband. Very, very proud."

* * *

"I've got the new comedies over here," Belle was saying. "_All's Well That Ends Well, Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure, Love's Labour Lost._ The new tragedies are over here. _Cymbeline, Troilus and Cressida…_"

"Ah, that old Problem Play," Adam noted, still holding a stack of books in the house that had become a library. When Belle smirked up at home from where she knelt, he tipped his head and quoted, "_Farewell, bastard._ Probably the greatest line Shakespeare ever wrote."

Belle giggled and held her arms out. "Give me the rest, will you?"

Adam passed her the biographies - _Richard II, Henry VIII, King John,_ and others. He watched as Belle tucked them into the shelves, and he said,

"Well, they'll certainly have a good comprehensive collection of Shakespeare now."

"That they will," Belle smiled. She pulled herself to her feet and brushed her hands on her simple apron. "Thank you for allowing me to bring so many books here."

"They bring everyone far more joy in this library than in the one in the castle," he said. "We still have thousands of books; we could certainly spare some for this noble place."

Before Belle could say anything more, the door of the house opened and a little girl backed in with five books stacked in her arms. At once, Adam recognized the child as Madeleine, the little girl who had started the others in their obeisance that fateful day weeks earlier. Madeleine dropped her stack of books when she realized Belle and Adam were inside the library, and she curtsied quickly before scrambling to pick up the books.

"So sorry, Madame Belle. Your Grace. Am I interrupting? Shall I go?"

"No! Of course not! So good to see you," Belle said warmly.

Adam bent to pick up one of the books and read the title on the binding. "_Utopia_ by Sir Thomas More," he noted, handing the book to the child with a smile. "What an interesting title. Do you like it?"

"I do," Madeleine said, taking the book, "but I don't think it's feasible. People can't really live like that?"

"Never?" Belle asked, taking a few of the books and helping Madeleine put them back on the shelves. "Not under any circumstances?"

"I'd like to think people were as good as that," Madeleine said, pushing a scientific treatise from Newton onto the shelf. She shook her head and admitted, "I'd need more evidence of goodness before I could believe in a Utopia."

"Try this one," Belle suggested, pulling a worn old text from the shelf. She held it out, and Madeleine used two hands to take it as she read the title.

"_Civitas Solis_. The City of the Sun. What is it, Madame Belle?"

"It's an Italian take on the idea of a idyllic place. No money, shared labor. No slavery. One thing you may notice, and probably not enjoy, is the way that women are communal property in this Utopia."

"Blech." Madeleine pulled a face. "How can it be idyllic if women are communal property?"

Belle grinned. "You'll need to read many people's take on the same idea before you decide if it's realistic."

Adam smiled a little to himself to see Belle interacting with a child that seemed very much a miniature version of her. Good, he thought. Villeneuve needed someone like Belle at all times, and if she was to live in the castle, it was fitting and right that Madeleine take her place as the resident bookworm girl.

The door to the library opened again, and Adam was very surprised to see LeFou come barrelling in from the snowy day. He rubbed his bare hands together, shutting the door as he said,

"Sorry, I'm late, Maddy; the roads were slippery from the snow, and… oh. Oh, my. Good afternoon, Your Grace. Madame Belle."

He bowed at the waist and stayed there for a moment, and Belle gave Adam and then Madeleine a very ponderous look.

"Good afternoon, Monsieur LeFou," said Adam finally, and LeFou rose. Little Madeleine explained,

"I've been giving Monsieur LeFou reading lessons."

"You have?" Belle suddenly looked and sounded like she was going to cry. She stared at a book on a shelf for a long moment, apparently overcome, and Madeleine pulled a small children's book of rhymes from the bookshelf.

"We've been working on poems about spring," Madeleine said proudly, and Monsieur LeFou recited,

"_And we ourselves are born anew, to blossom as the flowers do._"

"I have never heard truer words than those," Adam nodded. "We'll leave you to your lessons."

"Thank you for the new Shakespeare!" Madeleine said enthusiastically. "I can't wait to read them all."

"Goodbye, then," Belle nodded, accepting Adam's hand and waving as LeFou and Madeleine dipped respectfully again. As Adam and Belle walked out into the cold afternoon, he could hear LeFou's voice awkwardly and slowly saying,

"_All the snows do melt away, to make room for a… a brig… brigger…_"

"A brighter day," Madeleine corrected him kindly. "_All the snows do melt away, to make room for a brighter day._"

When they got back into the carriage, happy tears spilled down Belle's cheeks, and she stared out the window at her father's house.

"Do you think he'd be happy?" she wondered aloud, and Adam assured her,

"I'm sure he's very happy. Very proud. I know I am… I couldn't be more proud of you, Belle."

She gave him a damp-eyed smile and nodded. "Thank you."

* * *

"Oh… doesn't she look a dream?" Mrs. Potts asked, sounding more than a little emotional from where she stood beside Belle.

"She looks magnificent," Belle said honestly. Plumette was dancing with Lumière, and her gown was cream raw silk with pink and gold frills and lace. Her hair was piled up in tight curls atop her head, with a glittering gold headpiece and opulent white and pink flowers. Belle smiled a little as she beheld the way the gold-clad Lumière stared at his bride. "Have you ever seen a man look at a woman with so much love?"

Both Mrs. Potts and Madame de Garderobe chuckled then, and when Belle looked at them curiously, Madame de Garderobe said,

"The way the Master look at you? He and Lumière give each other run for the money when it come to looking at women with-a love."

"Don't be silly," Mrs. Potts said, patting Madame de Garderobe's shoulder. "Maestro Cadenza stares at you like you're an angel."

"And Mr. Potts… well, just look at him." Belle gestured with her glass of wine across the ballroom. Mr. Potts was standing chatting with Maestro Cadenza, and both men were smiling at their women. Then Belle realized that Adam was only half-attentive to the conversation he was having with Cogsworth. His blue eyes were locked on Belle, and his lips turned up a little when she glanced over.

"It would seem as though they're all quite enamored," Mrs. Potts laughed. "Perhaps we ought to give the boys some attention, eh?"

Mrs. Potts popped the little pastry she'd been munching into her mouth and winked at the other women as she walked off. Belle watched as Mrs. Potts took her husband in her arms, and suddenly Belle realized how much it must have hurt to have him miles away in the village for years and years with no idea his wife or son existed. Belle's chest ached as Chip went running up to his parents and all three of them began talking. She remembered Agathe's warning about the Plague, and all she could hope was that the children of Villeneuve and Chip would be spared.

"You look very pensive," said a voice from beside her. Belle turned to see Adam, resplendent as ever in scarlet velvet. Belle herself wore the same buttery yellow she'd worn months earlier at their garden party, the last real event that her father had attended. Belle studied her husband's sapphire eyes and noted,

"It's good to see everyone human and happy and together."

"So it is," Adam agreed. He looked up to where Lumière and Plumette were finishing their dance. He sipped from his wine and said, "I never thought I'd be a guest in a crowd at the wedding of two of my servants. How things change."

"How people grow," Belle nodded. "Like flowers in a garden. With the right care, the beauty comes out."

"Do you remember when I threw a snowball at your face?" Adam asked suddenly, and Belle laughed, sipping her wine.

"That was not a snowball," she said matter-of-factly. "It was a snow boulder, and I thought I was going to die."

"Sorry about that," the prince said awkwardly. "I suppose my point was… can't you just see Lumière playing with his child out in the gardens? Throwing snowballs?"

"Small ones, I hope," Belle said, and Adam laughed a little. He set his wine on the nearby table and held out his hand.

"Dance with me, will you?" he asked, for a slow minuet had started up from the little hired orchestra. Belle took his hand and let him lead her out onto the floor. They were quickly joined by Mr. and Mrs. Potts, by Madame de Garderobe and Maestro Cadenza, and by a coachman who had bravely asked a chambermaid to dance.

Belle curtsied low to her husband, and he gave her an elaborate bow in return. He held out his arm and Belle took it, and as they swept in an arc with the other couples, he murmured,

"You couldn't look more lovely if you tried."

Belle glanced over to Plumette, whose frilly gown draped just so in the front to accommodate her growing belly. "I think the bride is by far the loveliest one here."

Adam shook his head, trailing out from Belle and circling slowly around her. "Plumette looks wonderful," he conceded, "but my wife will always be the most beautiful person, no matter the room she's in. I look around and my eyes settle on you and I can't breathe."

"Breathing is important," Belle laughed quietly, spinning around slowly and then touching her palm to Adam's. She stared at his eyes, his clear blue eyes that had never changed no matter the circumstance, and she said with an abrupt seriousness, "You stole my heart for the first time in this castle's library. It was the moment I really knew I adored you. Then you stole it again the day you married me, and again in Verona, and in Florence and Bagno. You're stealing it away again even now. Someday you'll have to give it back."

"Never." Adam shook his head, sweeping Belle into his arms and letting his feet stop. "I have your heart, and you have mine. That won't ever change."

"I love you very much," she told him, and Adam took her face in his hands, once more quoting the line from The Tempest he so often used in situations like this.

"I would not wish any companion in the world but you," he said, and he leaned to kiss her, letting the wedding around them dissolve into the air as his lips touched hers.

* * *

**Epilogue - 18 months later**

* * *

"Ah! Look at my sweet little child. Look at her go. Come, Renée! Come to Papa!"

Lumière beckoned wildly at his daughter, who had her mother's beautiful curls and her father's playful eyes. Belle watched from the doorway of the parlor, smiling as Renée toddled from a grinning Plumette to a profoundly proud Lumière.

Renée had been spared the Plague that came just before her birth; Plumette had taken ill for a few days but had been rushed to the hospital, where she had received mysteriously effective care. Such had been the story for the children of Villeneuve, many of whom, including Madeleine, had contracted the disease but recovered. While the Plague had ravaged Poitiers and a few nearby towns, the villages around the castle had been spared except for a few very elderly victims. Not a single child had died. Belle often thought back to the day she and Adam had returned from Italy, the way they'd both been angry and confused about Agathe's demand that he once more become a beast to save the townspeople.

Agathe was an enigma, Belle thought; her goals were pure, but her methods were odd. And, yet, she couldn't find it in herself to complain about the hospital's strangeness, nor about the demands Agathe had made over the years. If it hadn't been for the new hospital, little Renée would not be waddling back and forth between her parents right now. And if it hadn't been for the first curse, she and Adam would have never met.

Belle put her hand on her own swollen belly, shutting her eyes as the baby inside her kicked a few times.

"Careful of Maman's ribs, then," she murmured down to her unborn child, thinking that this child was already a particularly prolific kicker. She raised her eyes to see Adam come into the far side of the parlour.

"Mrs. Potts says if we're not all eating in five minutes, dinner is cancelled," he said with a smile. He marched over and picked up Renée, looking utterly natural with her as she pressed her fingers to his lips and ordered him,

"Noise!"

"Oh, all right, then," the prince laughed. He buzzed his lips against Renée's fingers, sending the child into a wild fit of giggles. Plumette and Lumière both rose from where they'd been playing on the ground with their daughter, and as Adam hauled Renée up onto his shoulders, Plumette came walking over to Belle.

"He's going to be a very good father," Plumette assured her. Belle smiled and cradled her belly as she said nervously,

"Not too much longer till we find out. Any day now."

"Don't worry." Plumette gestured to the way Adam and Lumière were laughing with Renée. Plumette nodded and said again, with all the confidence in the world, "He'll be wonderful."

"Ladies, we must not make Mrs. Potts angry, eh?" said Lumière, and Adam flashed Belle a brilliant smile from where he stood holding Renée.

"Come, my love," he said gently, holding out one hand. Belle stepped into the parlor and walked with her husband and friends, with the child they all adored and the one they would all soon meet. She walked with them through the halls of the castle they all shared, their joyful voices reverberating through its halls.

**~ The End ~**


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